ernestbecker's video: This Mortal Life: Death Anxiety and Political Manipulation Q A

Join the Ernest Becker Foundation for this Q&A session discussing how death anxiety is manipulated in political campaigns, and how it can help us understand the current state of politics. Our panelists were Brian Burke, clinical psychologist at Fort Lewis College, Sheldon Solomon, social psychologist at Skidmore college, and moderator Morgan Rutkowski, a senior political science and psychology major at Fort Lewis College. Participants submitted questions in live time. Questions focused on fear-mongering, differences in response to male vs. female leaders, whether or not politicians use death anxiety with the explicit intention to influence us (whether they are aware of the research), and how covid-19 further exacerbates political polarization by acting as a death reminder, among other topics. See full speaker bios below. The Ernest Becker Foundation seeks to advance understanding, based on decades of research, of how the awareness of our mortality profoundly influences human behavior, on both an individual and societal level. http://www.ernestbecker.org Support us here: http://ernestbecker.org/support/ Brian Burke Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Fort Lewis College. His research interests include scholarship of teaching, motivational interviewing, and terror management theory. He has published several meta-analyses of terror management theory, which states that much of what humans do may be a defense against their inevitable mortality. He teaches a program on the psychology of happiness in countries such as Costa Rica, Chile and India, and teaches a five-week Field Course in Clinical Psychology, in which students work at the Colorado Mental Health Institute or other direct patient-care facilities. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. Sheldon Solomon, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College. He, along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, is the co-creator of Terror Management Theory (TMT), a theory based on the writings of Ernest Becker. Their research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and now over 1000 studies in TMT have demonstrated the effects of the uniquely human awareness of death on individual and social behavior. Sheldon is an American Psychological Society Fellow, and a recipient of an American Psychological Association Presidential Citation (2007), a Lifetime Career Award by the International Society for Self and Identity (2009), and the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs Annual Faculty Award (2011). Morgan Rutkowski is a senior at Fort Lewis College. She double-majored in Political Science and Psychology with a concentration in Forensic Science. Her project on “fear-mongering,” on the ways in which the US government capitalizes on people’s fears in order to gain political power, earned her a ticket to Washington, D.C., in 2020 where she presented at the National Political Science Honor Society, Pi Sigma Alpha’s 7th Annual National Student Research Conference. Morgan attended Field School in Clinical Psychology at the facility “Gateway to Success” in Pueblo, Colorado, where she worked with the local offender population while aiding in client intakes, cognition and domestic violence classes, and outpatient groups for patients transitioning out of the State Mental Hospital.