More on terror management theory — “mortality salience”
You may have wondered why our political and cultural climate has become so nasty; it seems that political and religious intolerance has never been more intense. In a previous post, I discussed terror management theory, based on the work of Ernest Becker (remember in “Annie Hall” when Woody Allen handed Diane Keaton a copy of Becker’s Denial of […]
Work in progress: Self-report Validity Indicators
Over the years, as my psychological assessment work transformed from primarily clinical to primarily forensic, we began to notice the impact on self-report validity scales (L, K, PIM, NIM, etc.); namely, they tended to elevate in evaluation contexts where the outcome depended on a positive picture, in the under-reporting direction (so called “fake good”). Impression management has […]
Terror, no not terrorist, management
I just did a book review of the massive 5th edition of the Handbook of Social Psychology and came across something quite new. The chapter is “Experimental Existential Psychology: Coping with the Facts of Life.” I thought existential philosophy and psychology were relegated to the ’60’s (you know when everyone read Sartre and Camus), or […]
Why Humans Have Sex
You may not be surpised that humans have sex for a variety of reasons, but 237? That’s what Meston and Buss (2007) found out in their study of University of Texas students and volunteers. They factor analyzed their list and came up with four factors: Physical reasons (stress reduction, pleasure, physical desirability, experience seeking), Goal […]