Terror Management Theory Collapses

Decades of 'mortality salience' results don’t hold up under registered replications and forensic meta‑analysis, suggesting death reminders don’t broadly drive harsher judgments, luxury spending, religiosity, or fertility. The piece contends psychologists’ motivated reasoning prolonged a doomed theory, echoing ego‑depletion’s fall. — If TMT is largely unsupported, a major explanatory frame in social psychology—and many media‑friendly claims built on it—needs to be retired or radically scaled back.