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In the mid-1980s, unsatisfied with the state of theory explaining several core psychological processes, and curious about the common underpinnings of human motivation, Greenberg et al. (1986) developed TMT as an overarching theory of human motivation. Initially met with a chilly reception, TMT has since provided the explanatory framework for hundreds of empirical studies’ testing and sustaining a broad range of novel hypotheses focusing on “why people behave the way they do” (Pyszczynski et al., 2015, p. 3), and the theory has since enjoyed widespread acceptance—albeit with a healthy measure of criticism.

TMT is based on the writings of several existential philosophers and scholars, and most notably the cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker and his Pulitzer Prize winning work, The Denial of Death, published in 1973. As a cultural anthropologist, Becker committed himself to integrating and synthesizing an all-encompassing range of insights and ideas across a broad spectrum of disciplines in an ambitious attempt to comprehend the elemental bases of human nature. According to Becker (1973), the process of human evolution and development has essentially culminated in a collection of meaning making systems—he refers to as culture—designed to provide a symbolic defense against our awareness of the inescapable inevitability of death. Becker (1973) took note of a duality in human life: a physical world and a symbolic world through which humans can transcend their corporeal impermanence by concentrating on the symbolic aspects of their existence.

Deeply rooted in Becker (1973)’s thinking, TMT contends that humans are unique in their development of abstract, symbolic thoughts, and the nature of their self-consciousness. And as with all animals, we humans are driven to maintain the viability of our biologically programmed struggle to survive (Greenberg, Solomon et al., 1992; Solomon et al., 1991). However beneficial our extraordinary human cognitive capabilities may be in helping us to reproduce and adapt to challenges from the physical environment, these same abilities have also forced us to realize the inexorability of our physical death (Menzies & Menzies, 2020). As Yalom (2008) notes, we have come to realize our lives “forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and inevitably, diminish and die” (p. 1).

Moreover, the realization of the inevitability of certain death conflicts with our biological striving for immortality, generating the overwhelming potential for debilitating existential dread (Greenberg et al., 1986). Fear of death is so biologically instinctive that even clinical professionals who are often exposed to death-related issues within an intellectually cushioned environment—and thus should be somewhat immunized from the terror of death—are nonetheless wholly vulnerable to the paralyzing existential anxiety thoughts death can so powerfully engender (Arndt et al., 2009).

To manage this existential angst, TMT posits that people instinctively engage in two distinct defense mechanisms: proximal defenses, to deal with the conscious awareness of death, and distal defenses, for when thoughts of death retreat from focal awareness, yet remain primed to quicken existential anxiety (Pyszczynski et al., 1999). Proximal defenses are active, conscious, and galvanized when death thoughts are brought into focal attention, as when, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic is being discussed on TV. During such times, efforts are made to contain or push thoughts of death into the distant future. More specifically, proximal defenses work to manage conscious death thought awareness (DTA) by disengaging from the contemplation of one’s mortality so as to remove such thoughts from current concerns (Goldenberg et al., 2000). Furthermore, for this purpose, a variety of communication behaviors are used to achieve the goal of restoring psychological equanimity. For instance, denying one’s susceptibility (“I’m too young to suffer a heart attack”), suppressing death thoughts (e.g., by selectively attending to more optimistic outlooks), or taking specific steps to prevent death (e.g., avoiding contamination, and disinfecting all the surfaces in one’s house) (Menzies & Menzies, 2020; Pyszczynski et al., 1999).

In contrast, distal defenses are nonconscious and experientially activated when thoughts of death are outside of conscious focal awareness. During distal defenses, people respond to the existential dread generated by DTA by seeking consensus and investing in cultural worldviews (CWVs), self-esteem, and/or close personal relationships that provide meaning in life while serving to buffer the anxiety (Ferraro et al., 2005; Friese & Hofmann, 2008). In this regard, communication plays central roles in all three aspects by helping to define and emphasize group identification, providing social validation, biasing information processing, promoting self-worth, and seeking and developing relational attachments (Miller & Massey, 2020).