Terror Management Health Model
The terror management health model (TMHM) explores the role that death plays on one's health and behavior. Goldenberg and Arndt (2008) state that the TMHM proposes the idea that death, despite its threatening nature, is in fact instrumental and purposeful in the conditioning of one's behavior towards the direction of a longer life.
According to Goldenberg and Arndt (2008), certain health behaviors such as breast self-exams (BSEs) can consciously activate and facilitate people to think of death, especially their own death. While death can be instrumental for individuals, in some cases, when breast self-exams activate peoples’ death thoughts an obstacle can present itself, in terms of health promotion, because individuals’ experience fear and threat.
On the other hand, death and thoughts of death can serve as a way of empowering the self, not as threats. Researchers, Cooper et al. (2011) explored TMHM in terms of empowerment, specifically using BSEs under two conditions; when death thoughts were prompted, and when thoughts of death were non-conscious. According to TMHM, peoples' health decisions, when death thoughts are not conscious, should be based on their motivations to act appropriately, in terms of the self and identity. Cooper et al. (2011) found that when mortality and death thoughts were primed, women reported more empowerment feelings than those who were not prompted before performing a BSE.
Additionally, TMHM suggests that mortality awareness and self-esteem are important factors in individuals' decision making and behaviors relating to their health. TMHM explores how people will engage in behaviors, whether positive or negative, even with the heightened awareness of mortality, in the attempt to conform to society's expectations and improve their self-esteem. The TMHM is useful in understanding what motivates individuals regarding their health decisions and behaviors.
In terms of smoking behaviors and attitudes, the impact of warnings with death messages depends on:
1). The individuals’ level of smoking-based self-esteem
2). The warnings' actual degree of death information
Read more about this topic: Terror Management Theory
Famous quotes containing the words terror, management, health and/or model:
“Methinks King Richard and myself should meet
With no less terror than the elements
Of fire and water, when their thundering shock
At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“People have described me as a “management bishop” but I say to my critics, “Jesus was a management expert too.””
—George Carey (b. 1935)
“At last I feel the equal of my parents. Knowing you are going to have a child is like extending yourself in the world, setting up a tent and saying “Here I am, I am important.” Now that I’m going to have a child it’s like the balance is even. My hand is as rich as theirs, maybe for the first time. I am no longer just a child.”
—Anonymous Father. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)