By examining how reminders of death and the effects of Sept. 11 influence evaluations of President George W. Bush, psychologists around the country are currently researching the relationship between the fear of death and political preferences.

Researchers, including UA psychology professor Jeff Greenberg and UA doctoral student Mark Landau, will conduct research based on the Terror Management Theory.

"TMT is a research program designed to test [Ernest] Becker's many ideas about the central role of the awareness of death in human thought and behavior," Landau said. "My collaborators and I are not on a political mission. We are just trying to gain insight into some basic psychological processes having to do with leaders and their appeal."

Based on the writings of Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer, Landau explained that the idea of the TMT came up "accidentally."

When Sheldon Solomon, a psychology professor at Skidmore College, shared some of Becker's work with Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, a psychology professor at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, the three came up with the TMT.

Though Greenberg, Pyszczynski and Solomon have been researching TMT for over 15 years, Landau said he has "been actively involved in TMT research for about five years" and has been a UA student for two years.

The TMT team, along with several other colleagues from various universities around the U.S., has generated four studies as part of its research.

A total of 380 students from three universities in Missouri, New York and New Jersey participated in the research, according to Landau.

"Most participants were psychology majors, but in many cases participants were volunteers who were approached in common areas and so presumably represent diverse majors," he said.

During the first study at Rutgers University, 97 participants were asked to think about and describe their own death then write about what would physically happen to their bodies during and after death.

When participants read an essay that highly favored Bush's decisions in regards to Sept. 11 and invading Iraq immediately after describing their own deaths, there was almost an 800 percent increase in votes for Bush, who is considered a charismatic leader.

"Charismatic leaders take many forms, but typically promote a grandiose vision of the group as sacred, righteous and divinely favored, and often promise a heroic triumph over evil," said Landau.

"One obvious next step would be to examine the factors of the situation or the individual that might change the effect of death and Sept. 11 reminders on the appeal of charismatic leaders. So far we know that political orientation makes very little difference in these effects."

The second study, conducted at the University of Missouri, "simply showed that subliminal reminders of Sept. 11 increase the tendency to think about death," said Greenberg.

During the third study, also conducted at Rutgers University, 74 participants were asked to describe the events of Sept. 11 and how these events affected them emotionally.

Afterwards, they were asked to read the same essay in the first study then indicate their political orientation on a scale from one (very conservative) to nine (very liberal).

"The third [study] showed both death and Sept. 11 reminders increased appeal of Bush and his policies."

According to Greenberg, the third study showed that both the thought of death and reminders about Sept. 11 increase Bush's appeal and his policies.

"Also, interestingly, this effect was the same for participants who rated themselves as liberal as it was for those who rated themselves as conservative," said Greenberg.

For the fourth study, conducted at Brooklyn College, 157 participants were asked to complete a two-part questionnaire. The first page asked participants to describe the emotions of physical pain and what they think will happen to them while experiencing intense pain.

For the second part, participants were asked to think about Bush then answer four questions about their opinions of Bush. They were then asked to repeat the process with John Kerry.

"In the fourth study, participants given death or Sept. 11 reminders showed increased regard for Bush, but also favored Bush over presidential nominee John Kerry in the upcoming elections," Landau said.

Although the TMT team has not investigated how fear may have influenced the way people voted for presidents in the past, Landau said "our analysis might be useful in understanding numerous instances of increased presidential popularity at times when a nation was facing a serious threat." An example would be John F. Kennedy's 13-point increase following the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Landau emphasized the fact that the research involved in the TMT experiments is not meant to affect voters.

"It is very rare for academic research like this to have any direct impact on large-scale outcomes such as elections. More importantly, this research is not part of a partisan effort and wasn't intended to affect the election; it was intended to examine one psychological factor that can affect how people regard their leaders."

The results of all four studies will be printed in the "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin" in September.

Landau also said the results of the charismatic leader paper, "where people evaluated hypothetical candidates who exemplified different leadership styles," will appear in "Psychological Science" in December.