Mark J Landau
Biographic Data
| ID | 219990 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark J Landau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark J |
| FAMILY NAME | Landau |
| SIGNATURE | LANDAU M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5717-754X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 609 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Why Life Moves Fast: Exploring the Mechanisms Behind Autobiographical Time Perception
We investigate why individuals commonly perceive time as passing quickly when reflecting on past periods of their lives. A traditional cognitive account proposes that routine experienced during a period decreases the number of memorable events, making that period appear short in retrospect. A motivational account derived from self-determination theory proposes that a period remembered as lacking self-determined growth feels unsatisfying or wasted…
The Path to Women’s Candidate Emergence is Paved with Metaphorical Resistance: Limits of a Journey Metaphor in Provoking Identity-Based Motivation
Research on identity-based motivation shows that people are motivated to take action to achieve their long-term goals when they perceive a connection between their current identity (i.e. “today me”) and an image of an accomplished identity in the future. Research inspired by Conceptual Metaphor Theory reveals that this connection can be strengthened by framing goal pursuit metaphorically as a journey along a continuous path connecting current and…
The core of division: Examining how essentialist views of the U.S. underlie right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism
We propose that political polarization stems in part from differing conceptions of one's nation. Four studies tested the hypothesis that national essentialism – conceiving one's nation as possessing an inherent, unchanging essence – underlies three political ideologies: right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism. Study 1 ( n = 263) provides correlational evidence that essentialist thinking about the U.S. positively…
Pandemic Nostalgia: Reduced Social Contact Predicts Consumption of Nostalgic Music During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Some scholars observed a “nostalgia bump” during the COVID-19 pandemic, where people compensated for social isolation by engaging with products and experiences evoking nostalgia. To further explore this effect and its underlying mechanism, the authors tested the hypothesis that reduced social contact during lockdown conditions would lead people to feel lonely and bored and, in turn, increase their consumption of nostalgic music. Study 1 ( N song …
Dear old love: Effects of reflecting on nostalgic memories about ex‐partners on current romantic relationship
Research on the impact of ex‐romantic partners on current romantic relationships is mainly focused on negative aspects. Here instead we focus on the potential positive influence of reflecting on nostalgic memories of one's ex‐partner. In three studies, we found that reflecting on nostalgic memories of one's ex‐partner increased the perception of current relationship quality (Studies 1– 3) and approach motivation towards the current relationship (…
Walls block waves: Using an inundation metaphor of immigration predicts support for a border wall
From early 20th century headlines to presidential tweets, immigration is described frequently in terms of waves, floods, and tides. Although usage of this inundation metaphor has been widely documented, its potential influence on immigration attitudes has not been assessed empirically. Building from conceptual metaphor theory’s claim that abstract ideas can be grounded in simpler, concrete concepts, we hypothesized that using the inundation metap…
On the road: Combining possible identities and metaphor to motivate disadvantaged middle-school students
In America, White and affluent middle-school students outperform minority students and those of low socioeconomic status on measures of academic performance. This achievement gap is partly attributable to differences in academic engagement. A promising strategy for engaging students is to elicit an academic possible identity: an image of oneself in the future as an accomplished student. Tests of this strategy’s efficacy show mixed results, howeve…
“Undoing” a Rhetorical Metaphor: Testing the Metaphor Extension Strategy
Political metaphors do more than punch up messages; they can systematically bias observers’ attitudes toward the issue at hand. What, then, is an effective strategy for counteracting a metaphor’s influence? One could ignore or criticize the metaphor, emphasizing strong counterarguments directly pertaining to the target issue. Yet if observers rely on it to understand a complicated issue, they may be reluctant to abandon it. In this case, a “metap…
Metaphors can give life meaning
Conceptual metaphor theory offers a perspective on how and when people find meaning in life. Whereas life’s meaning can be difficult to grasp, metaphor compares life to a relatively more concrete and structured concept. Supporting this account, American adults (Study 1) and German undergraduates (Study 2) who framed life as a journey reported more meaning in life. The journey metaphor was particularly beneficial for individuals with low levels of…
Why life speeds up: Chunking and the passage of autobiographical time
Time seems to speed up as one ages, and it affects how people find meaning in life and plan their future. What creates this perception? We examine the role of “chunking” – mentally bundling individual moments of experience under broad categories. With age, people group experiences into progressively bigger chunks (e.g., work, family). Consequently, fewer things seem to have occurred in a given period, so it seems to have passed faster in retrospe…
When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment
Do metaphors in health messages work? Exploring emotional and cognitive factors
Exploring Repressive Suffering Construal as a Function of Collectivism and Social Morality
Prior research demonstrated that an experimentally primed collectivist orientation increased repressive suffering construal (RSC): interpretation of suffering as being caused by deviance and having the purpose of maintaining social order. Furthermore, the effect of collectivism on RSC was mediated by social morality: the belief that society dictates morality. The current research provides the first cross-cultural empirical evidence for the links …
Frighteningly Similar: Relationship Metaphors Elicit Defensive Information Processing
Messages in public discourse commonly employ metaphors to describe abstract sociopolitical issues in terms of unrelated concepts. In prior research, exposure to such metaphoric messages influences attitudes. The current research tests the novel possibility that metaphor exposure can elicit defensive avoidance of otherwise benign information. We build on the evidence that individuals with avoidant attachment style avoid thinking about close relati…
Divergent Effects of Metaphoric Company Logos: Do They Convey What the Company Does or What I Need
Many corporate logos use pictorial metaphors to influence consumer attitudes. Priming concrete concepts—by means of logo exposure or other procedures—changes attitudes toward dissimilar abstract targets in metaphor-consistent ways. It is assumed, however, that observers apply a logo’s metaphor externally to interpret the company and its service. This research examined the possibility that observers may instead apply that metaphor internally to in…
Remembering the real me: Nostalgia offers a window to the intrinsic self
Seven studies reveal that nostalgia, a sentimental affection for the past, offers a window to the intrinsic self-concept-who people think they truly are. In Study 1, state nostalgia was associated with higher authenticity and lower extrinsic self-focus (concern with meeting extrinsic value standards). In Study 2, experimentally primed nostalgia increased perceived authenticity of the past self, which in turn predicted reduced current extrinsic se…
Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world
People are motivated to perceive themselves as having control over their lives. Consequently, they respond to events and cognitions that reduce control with compensatory strategies for restoring perceived control to baseline levels. Prior theory and research have documented 3 such strategies: bolstering personal agency, affiliating with external systems perceived to be acting on the self's behalf, and affirming clear contingencies between actions…
When enemies go viral (or not)—A real-time experiment during the “Stop Kony” campaign
Epistemic motives moderate the effect of metaphoric framing on attitudes
Embodied metaphor and abstract problem solving: Testing a metaphoric fit hypothesis in the health domain
The dramaturgical perspective in relation to self and culture
Social scientists have studied human behavior from the dramaturgical perspective (DP), through which society is viewed as an elaborate play or game in which individuals enact different roles. The DP is more than a theoretical construct; members of individualist, secular societies occasionally adopt the DP with relation to their own lives. The current research examined the consequences of adopting the DP for evaluations of the self and conceptions…
The college journey and academic engagement: How metaphor use enhances identity-based motivation
People commonly talk about goals metaphorically as destinations on physical paths extending into the future or as contained in future periods. Does metaphor use have consequences for people's motivation to engage in goal-directed action? Three experiments examine the effect of metaphor use on students' engagement with their academic possible identity: their image of themselves as academically successful graduates. Students primed to frame their a…
Exploring Nostalgia's Influence on Psychological Growth
Prior research shows that the experience of nostalgia—a sentimental longing for the past—serves to buffer self-threat. Complementing this work, the current research assessed the possibility that nostalgia promotes psychological growth—that is, the potential to cultivate inner potentialities, seek out optimal challenges, and integrate new experiences into the self-concept. Two studies tested the effect of experimentally induced nostalgia on growth…
Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat
Self‐Harm Focus Leads to Greater Collective Guilt: The Case of the U.S .‐ I raq Conflict
Collective guilt from harm one's group has caused an out‐group is often undermined because people minimize or legitimize the harm done (i.e., they generate exonerating cognitions ). When a group action has harmed both the in‐group and an out‐group, focusing people on “self‐harm”—ways in which the in‐group has harmed itself—may elicit more collective guilt because self‐harm is less likely to be exonerated. In Study 1, American participants who foc…
Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world
People are motivated to perceive themselves as having control over their lives. Consequently, they respond to events and cognitions that reduce control with compensatory strategies for restoring perceived control to baseline levels. Prior theory and research have documented 3 such strategies: bolstering personal agency, affiliating with external systems perceived to be acting on the self's behalf, and affirming clear contingencies between actions…
A metaphor-enriched social cognition
Social cognition is the scientific study of the cognitive events underlying social thought and attitudes. Currently, the field's prevailing theoretical perspectives are the traditional schema view and embodied cognition theories. Despite important differences, these perspectives share the seemingly uncontroversial notion that people interpret and evaluate a given social stimulus using knowledge about similar stimuli. However, research in cognitiv…
An existential function of enemyship: Evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control
Perceiving oneself as having powerful enemies, although superficially disagreeable, may serve an important psychological function. On the basis of E. Becker's (1969) existential theorizing, the authors argue that people attribute exaggerated influence to enemies as a means of compensating for perceptions of reduced control over their environment. In Study 1, individuals dispositionally low in perceived control responded to a reminder of external …
Competitive victimhood as a response to accusations of ingroup harm doing
Accusations of unjust harm doing by the ingroup threaten the group's moral identity. One strategy for restoring ingroup moral identity after such a threat is competitive victimhood: claiming the ingroup has suffered compared with the harmed outgroup. Men accused of harming women were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared with women (Study 1), and women showed the same effect when accused of discriminating against men (S…
Death Goes to the Polls: A Meta‐Analysis of Mortality Salience Effects on Political Attitudes
Terror management theory posits that people are motivated to affirm cultural meaning systems, including political ideologies, to avoid the awareness of mortality. Accordingly, studies show that increasing mortality salience (MS) intensifies people's attitudes toward political issues and figures. However, whereas in some studies MS increases affirmation of preexisting political ideologies, be they liberal or conservative (supporting a “worldview‐d…
A Function of Form: Terror Management and Structuring the Social World
Drawing on lay epistemology theory, the authors assessed a terror management analysis of the psychological function of structuring social information. Seven studies tested variations of the hypothesis that simple, benign interpretations of social information function, in part, to manage death-related anxiety. In Studies 1-4, mortality salience (MS) exaggerated primacy effects and reliance on representative information, decreased preference for a …
Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense: Distinguishing compensatory control from uncertainty management and terror management processes
A dual-motive model of scapegoating: Displacing blame to reduce guilt or increase control
The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicab…
Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art
Why do people dislike art that they find meaningless? According to terror management theory, maintaining a basic meaningful view of reality is a key prerequisite for managing concerns about mortality. Therefore, mortality salience should decrease liking for apparently meaningless art, particularly among those predisposed to unambiguous knowledge. Accordingly, mortality salience diminished affection for modern art in Study 1, and this effect was s…
Seeing I to I: A Pathway to Interpersonal Connectedness
The authors introduce the construct of I-sharing--the belief that one shares an identical subjective experience with another person--and the role it plays in liking. In Studies 1-3, participants indicated their liking for an objectively similar and an objectively dissimilar person, one of whom I-shared with them and the other of whom did not. Participants preferred the objectively similar person but only when that person I-shared with them. Studi…
The siren's call: Terror management and the threat of men's sexual attraction to women
Why do sexually appealing women often attract derogation and aggression? According to terror management theory, women's sexual allure threatens to increase men's awareness of their corporeality and thus mortality. Accordingly, in Study 1 a subliminal mortality prime decreased men's but not women's attractiveness ratings of alluring women. In Study 2, mortality salience (MS) led men to downplay their sexual intent toward a sexy woman. In Study 3, …
Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat
Remembering the real me: Nostalgia offers a window to the intrinsic self
Seven studies reveal that nostalgia, a sentimental affection for the past, offers a window to the intrinsic self-concept-who people think they truly are. In Study 1, state nostalgia was associated with higher authenticity and lower extrinsic self-focus (concern with meeting extrinsic value standards). In Study 2, experimentally primed nostalgia increased perceived authenticity of the past self, which in turn predicted reduced current extrinsic se…
Epistemic motives moderate the effect of metaphoric framing on attitudes
The dynamics of death and meaning: The effects of death-relevant cognitions and personal need for structure on perceptions of meaning in life
Do reminders of mortality increase or decrease perceptions of life's meaning? The authors propose that death-relevant thought has divergent effects on meaning perceptions depending on individuals' personal need for structure (PNS) or dispositional desire for structured knowledge. In prior research, high-PNS individuals primed with mortality-related stimuli were found to employ clearly structured conceptions of reality. Consequently, these individ…
Attachment to objects as compensation for close others' perceived unreliability
The protective identity: Evidence that mortality salience heightens the clarity and coherence of the self-concept
Embodied metaphor and abstract problem solving: Testing a metaphoric fit hypothesis in the health domain
Do metaphors in health messages work? Exploring emotional and cognitive factors
Exploring metaphor's epistemic function: Uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects on social perceptions
Managing terror when self-worth and worldviews collide: Evidence that mortality salience increases reluctance to self-enhance beyond authorities
The college journey and academic engagement: How metaphor use enhances identity-based motivation
People commonly talk about goals metaphorically as destinations on physical paths extending into the future or as contained in future periods. Does metaphor use have consequences for people's motivation to engage in goal-directed action? Three experiments examine the effect of metaphor use on students' engagement with their academic possible identity: their image of themselves as academically successful graduates. Students primed to frame their a…
When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment
Subjectivity uncertainty theory of objectification: Compensating for uncertainty about how to positively relate to others by downplaying their subjective attributes
Embodied metaphor and the “true” self: Priming entity expansion and protection influences intrinsic self-expressions in self-perceptions and interpersonal behavior
Deliver us from Evil: The Effects of Mortality Salience and Reminders of 9/11 on Support for President George W. Bush
According to terror management theory, heightened concerns about mortality should intensify the appeal of charismatic leaders. To assess this idea, we investigated how thoughts about death and the 9/11 terrorist attacks influence Americans’ attitudes toward current U.S. President George W. Bush. Study 1 found that reminding people of their own mortality (mortality salience) increased support for Bush and his counterterrorism policies. Study 2 dem…
A Function of Form: Terror Management and Structuring the Social World
Drawing on lay epistemology theory, the authors assessed a terror management analysis of the psychological function of structuring social information. Seven studies tested variations of the hypothesis that simple, benign interpretations of social information function, in part, to manage death-related anxiety. In Studies 1-4, mortality salience (MS) exaggerated primacy effects and reliance on representative information, decreased preference for a …
The siren's call: Terror management and the threat of men's sexual attraction to women
Why do sexually appealing women often attract derogation and aggression? According to terror management theory, women's sexual allure threatens to increase men's awareness of their corporeality and thus mortality. Accordingly, in Study 1 a subliminal mortality prime decreased men's but not women's attractiveness ratings of alluring women. In Study 2, mortality salience (MS) led men to downplay their sexual intent toward a sexy woman. In Study 3, …
Seeing I to I: A Pathway to Interpersonal Connectedness
The authors introduce the construct of I-sharing--the belief that one shares an identical subjective experience with another person--and the role it plays in liking. In Studies 1-3, participants indicated their liking for an objectively similar and an objectively dissimilar person, one of whom I-shared with them and the other of whom did not. Participants preferred the objectively similar person but only when that person I-shared with them. Studi…
Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art
Why do people dislike art that they find meaningless? According to terror management theory, maintaining a basic meaningful view of reality is a key prerequisite for managing concerns about mortality. Therefore, mortality salience should decrease liking for apparently meaningless art, particularly among those predisposed to unambiguous knowledge. Accordingly, mortality salience diminished affection for modern art in Study 1, and this effect was s…
Managing terror when self-worth and worldviews collide: Evidence that mortality salience increases reluctance to self-enhance beyond authorities
Toward Understanding the Fame Game: The Effect of Mortality Salience on the Appeal of Fame
Although the appeal of fame in society seems to be increasing, experimental research has yet to examine the motivations that may underlie this apparent appeal. As a first step toward doing so, we conducted three studies to assess whether concerns with mortality play a role in these phenomena. Based on terror management theory and research, we hypothesized that reminders of death would increase people's desire for fame and admiration of celebritie…
Toward a New Understanding of Two Films from the Dark Side: Utilizing Terror Management Theory to Analyze Rosemary's Baby and Straw Dogs
Rosemary's Baby and Straw Dogs are New Hollywood films that explore themes of death and violence. Terror management theory (TMT), a theory of the role of death fear in the human striving for significance, is utilized to clarify various aspects of these films, including their use of death imagery and the motivations of the characters, and to reveal some novel parallels between the films
The protective identity: Evidence that mortality salience heightens the clarity and coherence of the self-concept
The dynamics of death and meaning: The effects of death-relevant cognitions and personal need for structure on perceptions of meaning in life
Do reminders of mortality increase or decrease perceptions of life's meaning? The authors propose that death-relevant thought has divergent effects on meaning perceptions depending on individuals' personal need for structure (PNS) or dispositional desire for structured knowledge. In prior research, high-PNS individuals primed with mortality-related stimuli were found to employ clearly structured conceptions of reality. Consequently, these individ…
Imbuing Everyday Actions with Meaning in Response to Existential Threat
Drawing on terror management theory and related perspectives on existential motivation, we hypothesized that people manage concerns with personal mortality by imbuing their everyday actions with abstract, self-relevant meaning. Accordingly, we found that subtle reminders of mortality led participants to view hypothetical actions at higher levels of action identification (Study 1), draw more connections between their current actions and personally…
On graves and graven images: A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of art
We present an existential account of the psychological function of artistic activity derived from terror management theory. From this perspective, artistic creation and response alleviate concerns with mortality by affording opportunities to bolster cultural belief systems that provide death-transcending meaning and significance. We review research showing that reminders of mortality exaggerate people's responses (positive and negative) to artwor…
Embodied metaphor and the “true” self: Priming entity expansion and protection influences intrinsic self-expressions in self-perceptions and interpersonal behavior
An existential function of enemyship: Evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control
Perceiving oneself as having powerful enemies, although superficially disagreeable, may serve an important psychological function. On the basis of E. Becker's (1969) existential theorizing, the authors argue that people attribute exaggerated influence to enemies as a means of compensating for perceptions of reduced control over their environment. In Study 1, individuals dispositionally low in perceived control responded to a reminder of external …
A metaphor-enriched social cognition
Social cognition is the scientific study of the cognitive events underlying social thought and attitudes. Currently, the field's prevailing theoretical perspectives are the traditional schema view and embodied cognition theories. Despite important differences, these perspectives share the seemingly uncontroversial notion that people interpret and evaluate a given social stimulus using knowledge about similar stimuli. However, research in cognitiv…
Wringing the perceptual rags: Reply to IJzerman and Koole (2011)
We Landau, Meier, & Keefer (2010) reviewed a growing body of research demonstrating metaphors' far-reaching influence on social information processing. In their commentary, IJzerman and Koole (2011) claimed that we devoted insufficient attention to the origin of metaphors, and they reviewed research showing that bodily, social, and cultural experiences constrain metaphor development. Given the focus of our article and the tone of our admittedly c…
Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense: Distinguishing compensatory control from uncertainty management and terror management processes
Exploring metaphor's epistemic function: Uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects on social perceptions
Effects of low survivability cues and participant sex on physiological and behavioral responses to sexual stimuli
Competitive victimhood as a response to accusations of ingroup harm doing
Accusations of unjust harm doing by the ingroup threaten the group's moral identity. One strategy for restoring ingroup moral identity after such a threat is competitive victimhood: claiming the ingroup has suffered compared with the harmed outgroup. Men accused of harming women were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared with women (Study 1), and women showed the same effect when accused of discriminating against men (S…
Subjectivity uncertainty theory of objectification: Compensating for uncertainty about how to positively relate to others by downplaying their subjective attributes
Attachment to objects as compensation for close others' perceived unreliability
A dual-motive model of scapegoating: Displacing blame to reduce guilt or increase control
The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicab…
Collectivism and the meaning of suffering
People need to understand why an instance of suffering occurred and what purpose it might have. One widespread account of suffering is a repressive suffering construal (RSC): interpreting suffering as occurring because people deviate from social norms and as having the purpose of reinforcing the social order. Based on the theorizing of Emile Durkheim and others, we propose that RSC is associated with social morality-the belief that society dictat…
Exploring Nostalgia's Influence on Psychological Growth
Prior research shows that the experience of nostalgia—a sentimental longing for the past—serves to buffer self-threat. Complementing this work, the current research assessed the possibility that nostalgia promotes psychological growth—that is, the potential to cultivate inner potentialities, seek out optimal challenges, and integrate new experiences into the self-concept. Two studies tested the effect of experimentally induced nostalgia on growth…
Psychology (49 works) · Social Psychology (45 works) · Social Psychology (26 works) · Cognitive psychology (20 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (20 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (16 works) · Metaphor (15 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (13 works) · Linguistics (13 works)