The Terminal Treadmill: A Terror Management Perspective on Everyday Routines

This thesis explores existential perspectives on everyday routines through the lens of terror management theory (Ch. I), an empirical framework for studying how the awareness of mortality shapes everyday thought and behavior. We review wide-ranging studies illustrating the terror management function of structured conceptions of reality and the self (Ch. II). Going further, we introduce the Routine Terror Management (RTM) model, positing that everyday routines serve a dual role in terror management (Ch. III). In the structural role, routines afford order, predictability, and consistency, buffering mortality concerns, particularly for those lower in self-esteem. Three studies support this structural role: After exposure to mortality reminders, individuals lower in self-esteem found their everyday routines more appealing (Study 1), experienced reduced death-thought accessibility when their routines were made salient (Study 2) and expressed less openness to changing their routines (Study 3; Chapter IV). In the cultural role, adaptive routines-those conducive to outcomes valued by the culture-affirm that one is meeting prescribed standards of value, thus buffering against mortality concerns in a broader cultural context. We present the Cross-Dimensional Adaptive Routines Inventory for measuring routine adaptiveness and test its predictive value in four studies (Ch. V). As hypothesized, higher levels of adaptive routines predict higher self-esteem (Study 4) and stronger beliefs in the importance (Study 5) and achievability (Study 6) of cultural standards. Further, we explore how mortality reminders impact those lacking in adaptive routines. After mortality reminders fail to motivate individuals lower in adaptive routines to bolster beliefs in the importance and achievability of cultural standards (Studies 5 and 6), we find that mortality reminders amplify the motivation to self-escape among this group. In contrast, those higher in adaptive routines show a lower motivation to self-escape that is not provoked by mortality reminders (Study 7). Implications and future directions for the RTM model are discussed (Ch. VI).