X-Message-Number: 7060
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 10:44:43 -0700
From: Tim Freeman <>
Subject: Assumptions in Terror Management

From: Peter Merel <>
>Why don't medical and life insurance sales encounter this "existential
>terror"? What distinguishes cryonics as a particularly scary prospect under 
>this theory? I think what's been posted so far doesn't answer this.

First, I should emphasize that the entire purpose of TM is that this
"existential terror" is never encountered.  Experiments cited in the
paper say that people do terror management with no negative affect
(that is, no unpleasant emotions).  TM successfully manages (prevents)
the terror.  When TM comes into play, the person doing it simply
displays an abject failure to think clearly about the subject at hand.

The theory predicts that new things having to do with death will
always have a tough time.  Once they are well-established, they become
part of the cultural worldview and terror management pushes them
forward instead of back.  

I'm not sure what you mean by "medical sales".  Irrational behavior
around people dying in a medical setting is quite common.  Look at how
much of a battle the euthanesia people in Australia are fighting; I
have yet to read an argument against them that even attempts to make
sense.  Another instance is the difficulty a century or so ago in
creating sterile procedures in hospitals to prevent infections.
Anesthesia had to be discovered more than once.  People who have
nothing better to do with their corpses rarely donate their organs.
People die from restrictions on interstate transportation of donated
organs in the US, and these restrictions have no obvious offsetting
benefit.  Etc.

Life insurance is halfway part of the worldview.  It is considered an
ordinary thing to do, but the salesmen generally have to personally
persuade people that it is worth buying instead of being like a bank
and having the customers come to them.  This is a hint of what
marketing cryonics will be like between the time it becomes a viable
large-scale business and the time it becomes obviously the right thing
to do.  Maybe we want to study life insurance sales techniques?

The problem with marketing cryonics isn't that it is particularly
scary.  The problem is that it reminds people of death, and it is
unusual (that is, not part of the cultural worldview).  The theory
predicts that marketing something like this will not be
straightforward, and that's what we observe about cryonics.  Somehow
the important part of the sale has to happen before the potential
client is reminded of death.

Tim Freeman


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