Cutting Away Death Anxiety

     This past Saturday, I started out fall break the same way any respectable student would: Netflix binge. However after a few hours, that got old and I decided to give live TV a chance. Looking to be more educational I decided upon watching Botched for its amazing surgical technique. Yes the drama, and ridiculous characters are an added bonus, but as a junior on the pre-health track, I was totally watching for academic reasons...

          As one poor patient was getting his nose broken and reset for the fourth time in his life, I sat in my pjs while eating Nutella out of a jar. As I was sitting there, I began to think to myself, “What on earth is it that makes these people become so obsessed with looking like cartoon characters?” Don't get me wrong, I've looked in the mirror one or twice and thought about how I'd prefer a nose that wasn't shaped like a potato, but I've never felt the need to look like a Barbie Doll. There must be a multitude of different reason why these people want to change themselves.

        Thinking about this led me to recall what we discussed in class, about how the idea of the self is created. Not only do these patients trying to change their appearance, but they usually are trying to fix body parts that were incorrectly altered in their attempt to shape who they are as people.

           These patients are following their core motive of wanting to feel good about themselves. In doing so they are adhering to Terror Management Theory. On the surface, these patients are attempting to look better, and more youthful. However deep down they are inflating their self-esteem in order to protect themselves from thoughts about their own morality. Through use of Botox, and face-lifts, these individuals are attempting to kick aging to the curve.

         In a study done by Kim-Pong Tam, the use of cosmetic surgery as a symbolic coping mechanism against death anxiety was discussed. Researchers performed both a correlation study and an experiment where they hypothesized that, in accordance to Terror Management Theory, when someone's death anxiety is heightened, he or she would be more accepting of cosmetic surgery. In their first study, 242 participants were asked to complete the following three written tests, measured on a 7 point scale: the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale, the Death Attitude Profile-Revised, and the Acceptance of Cosmetic Surgery Scale. The researchers found that there was a positive correlation between death terror and cosmetic surgery acceptance.

         In the second study, a typical TMT experiment was performed. 117 undergrad students were randomly assigned to three conditions: control, mortality salience with no delay, and mortality salience condition. Those in the mortality salience condition were primed with a reminder of their own mortality. The participants completed the previously listed written tests and it was found that those reminded of their inevitable death were had a higher acceptance of cosmetic surgery than the control group.

        After reading this article, and I began to look at Botched a little differently. Yes, not all of these participants were trying to look more youthful, but those individuals who did get such procedures probably were trying to cope with death anxiety. This doesn't mean that they will by any means beat death, but they have distracted themselves from what is yet to come. I may not be jumping to go under the knife, but now I have a better understanding of why others do. Death anxiety is real, and people will do whatever they can to suppress it.

Tam, K. (2013). Existential Motive Underlying Cosmetic Surgery: A Terror Management Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 43(5), 947-955. doi:10.1111

-Alyssa Kastrinakis