Answer both questions please

Question

1.Briefly describe the findings from the study with "Michael," the Black college-aged kid who was a confederate (a fake participant working for the experimenter). Hint: in one set of conditions he acted like the stereotypical Black man his age and in another set, he acted as a preppy, distinguished student.

2.We want to distance ourselves from other animals and not think of ourselves as animals. Why is this, in light of TMT? How do we achieve this?

Answer 1

Hi Karla,

It seems like the first question is based on a reading you may have been assigned or topic that you covered in lecture. I'm not able to specifically answer it since I lack the context of the study. But I would encourage you to consider stereotypes and how they may play out with how others perceived Michael in once conditions versus the other.

With the second question, terror management theory refers to anxiety/fear that people have towards death and strategies that they try to implement to reduce that worry. In this case, people may want to distance themselves from seeing themselves as animals since they likely see deaths of animals often. Whether it be from slaughterhouses producing meat from animals, roadkill on highways, or nature taking its course between predator and prey. These strong associations of death relative to animals can make humans hesitant to identify as an animal because they do not want to think of the ease/fragility of their own mortality. An example of how we might achieve this is making rationalizations such as "I can walk on my legs and think rationally, therefore I'm better than an animal and not subject to the dangers animals face to their lives".

I hope that this was helpful!