''This is an interesting TMT study in which the effect of mortality salience on worldview defense was completely eliminated when participants consumed a placebo (tea) they believed would block their capacity to experience anxiety.

Placebos and cultural worldviews almost interchangeably countered potential death anxiety, although placebos deal more with “proximal defenses” (death closer to conscious awareness) and cultural worldviews more with “distal defenses” (death farther from conscious awareness). In evolutionary terms, the scarcity of medical treatments in primitive times must have decreased the relative cost of placebo self-deception as compared to the psychological benefits, which in a % of cases actually helped with disease recovery. Similarly, the cost of the pitfalls & conflicts resulting from the pursuit of cultural significance/immortality must’ve been less than the benefits of decreasing the crippling anxiety resulting from the insignificance/finitude represented by death''.

 

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