Why Do We Need What We Need? A Terror Management Perspective on the Roots of Human Social Motivation

Abstract In this article, we use terror management theory to address the question of why people are motivated to achieve a variety of specific psychological endstates. We argue that the most basic of all human motives is an instinctive desire for continued life, and that all more specific motives are ultimately rooted in this basic evolutionary adaptation. We propose a tripartite motive system through which this prime directive for continued life is achieved, along with a hierarchical model of the relation between motives at different levels of abstraction. This analysis specifies the relation between the self-preservation instinct and various more specific and concrete psychological motives. The three major branches of this motivational hierarchy consist of (a) direct biological motives, which are oriented toward attaining the biological necessities of life (e.g., food, air, water); (b) symbolic-defensive motives, which are oriented toward control- ling the potential for existential terror brought on by awareness of the ultimate impossibility of continued satisfaction of the self-preservation instinct; and (c) self- expansive motives, which are oriented toward the growth and expansion of the individual's competencies and internal representations of reality. To illustrate the integrative utility of this analysis, we discuss the role of superordinate symbolic terror management needs in the pursuit of cognitive consistency, belief in a just world, self-awareness related behavior, self-esteem, social identity, impression management, and the control of others' worldviews.