Globalization, Culture, and Anxiety: Perspectives and Predictions from Terror Management Theory

Abstract

This paper considers the psychological and social consequences of an ascendant global capitalism and its resultant cultural impositions from the perspective of current social psychology theory. Terror Management Theory (TMT) suggests that culture serves as a psychological defense against the terror inherent in human existence. TMT proposes that cultures serve the vital psychological function of making anxiety-buffering self-esteem available to humans by providing world-views and standards of value to achieve within that description of reality. Persons whose faith in that world-view is strong and who see themselves as living up to its standards of value achieve the anxiety-buffering effects of self-esteem needed in an existentially terrifying world. Because a hegemonic global capitalism and its cultural impositions guarantee that in a cultural meaning system that affords anxiety-buffe ring self-esteem to only the “winners” of the great competition, most people will perceive themselves as “losers.” TMT predicts increased anxiety and social distress because a global capitalist system and culture will offer psychological sustenance to a minority of the world’s people. This paper will review the theory, its empirical supports, and offer a set of hypotheses derived from the predictable psychological, social, and behavioral consequences of a global capitalist system and culture.

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