Tom

Tom Pyszczynski

#27,172
Most Influential Person Now

American psychologist

Tom Pyszczynski's Academic­Influence.com Rankings

Tom Pyszczynski
Psychology
#821
World Rank
#1045
Historical Rank
#514
USA Rank
Social Psychology
#180
World Rank
#190
Historical Rank
#97
USA Rank
psychology Degrees
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Tom Pyszczynski's Degrees

Why Is Tom Pyszczynski Influential?

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According to Wikipedia, Tom Pyszczynski is an American social psychologist. He is notable, together with Jeff Greenberg and Sheldon Solomon, for founding the field of Terror Management Theory . TMT is a theory that is based on the writings of Ernest Becker, along with other existential thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, and Heidegger. At the heart of TMT is the notion that human beings have a unique capacity for self-awareness, which makes them realize that death is inevitable. This realization, which conflicts with people's instinctive need for self-preservation, gives rise to a potential for existential anxiety, or terror, that is greater than that in other animals. To manage this potential for terror, people have constructed cultural worldviews, which assure people of either a literal form of afterlife or a symbolic form of death transcendence . When people live up to the standards implied by their cultural worldviews, they attain a sense of positive self-esteem. Thus, TMT suggests that one major psychological function of self-esteem lies in protecting people against existential anxiety. TMT was explicitly formulated to be open to empirical testing. Indeed, since TMT was first conceived in the 1980s, the theory has inspired hundreds of experiments that were designed to test core ideas of TMT. For instance, in support of TMT, many experiments have shown that reminding people of their own mortality leads people to defend their cultural worldviews more vigorously. For instance, people who are briefly reminded of death are more dismissive of someone who criticizes their culture.

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Tom Pyszczynski's Published Works

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Total number of citations to an author for the works they published in a given year. This highlights publication of the most important work(s) by the author
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What Schools Are Affiliated With Tom Pyszczynski?

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