Shop Captain America
$20.56 with 18 percent savings
Digital List Price: $24.95

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.
eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.

Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Thomas A. Pyszczynski
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Tom Pyszyzynski (Author), Sheldon Solomon (Author), Jeff Greenberg (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 22 ratings
See all formats and editions

In the Wake of 9/11 explores the emotions of despair, fear, and anger that arose after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the Autumn of 2001. The authors analyze reactions to the attacks through the lens of terror management theory, an existential psychological model that explains why humans react the way they do to the threat of death and how this reaction influences their post-threat cognition and emotion. The theory provides ways to understand and reduce terrorism's effect and possibly find resolutions to conflicts involving terrorism.

The authors focus primarily on the reaction in the United States to the 9/11 attack, but their model is applicable to all instances of terrorism, and they expand their discussion to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This fascinating book has practical implications and will be an irreplaceable resource for mental health practitioners, researchers, and anyone concerned with the causes and effects of terrorism.

Previous slide of product details
  1. ISBN-13
    978-1557989543
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Publisher
    American Psychological Association
  4. Publication date
    August 15, 2003
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    848 KB
  7. See all details
Next slide of product details

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...beautifully scientific, richly interdisciplinary, and profoundly relevant." -- Lyn Y. Abramson, PhD, University of Wisconsin Madison

"...perhaps the most important unified body of psychological research in the past two decades." -- Tyler Volk, PhD, New York University

About the Author

Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg began doing research together as graduate students at the University of Kansas, where they each received a PhD in psychology in the early 1980s.

Inspired by the work of the Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, they developed Terror Management Theory as a conceptual framework to illuminate the interrelatedness of various forms of human behavior and motivation. The theory integrates ideas from existential psychology, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary theory into a framework that is amenable to rigorous scientific testing. In doing so, their work lays the groundwork for an experimental existential psychology, a new perspective on the human condition influencing current thinking on a wide range of issues within psychology. Their work has yielded a wealth of new insights into diverse aspects of the human condition, including self-esteem striving, prejudice, intergroup conflict, human sexuality, unconscious motives, conformity, aggression, creativity, altruism, and love.

Currently, the three authors are professors of psychology—Dr. Pyszczynski at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Dr. Solomon at Skidmore College, and Dr. Greenberg at the University of Arizona.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00DGC3XKI
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ American Psychological Association; 1st edition (August 15, 2003)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 15, 2003
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 848 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 227 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 22 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Thomas A. Pyszczynski

Thomas A. Pyszczynski

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
22 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • M. Janssen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great service!
    Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Arrived in a timely manner and was flawless, thanks!
    Helpful
     Report
  • Glenn Harvey
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Good school book
    Helpful
     Report
  • mem
    5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Insights into Individual and Collective Violence
    Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2002
    This book explores our recent experience of terrorism through the lens of psychological research into the impact of "death anxiety" on human attitudes and behaviors. By the end, we readers have been carried far beyond The Obvious - that death anxiety is aroused by threats to our lives --- and smack into Surprise and Dismay: Surprise, to realize that "death anxiety" is a constant in human nature that is also aroused by perceived threats to anything with which we identify or through which we give meaning to our lives. And Dismay, to realize that death anxiety itself, is a root-cause of human violence. No, that doesn't mean that all of us are physically violent, nor does it mean that psychology alone explains human violence or terrorism. (The authors, true to their multidisciplinary commitments, push the analysis well beyond psychology.) It does mean, however, that we cannot understand or hope to diminish violence without insight into the human factors that contribute to it. The authors paint an accessible but realistically complex picture of the causes and the impact of the events of 9/11, and although they offer no easy answers... their research and analysis give rise to new insights into our human and historical predicament. This is powerful, provocative reading, and while it is often disturbing, it is also peculiarly satisfying because it has the ring of truth. Whether or not you agree with everything the authors say, you will finish this book with new and revealing ways to think about human nature, individual and collective violence, the struggle for meaning, and the demands of and obstacles to freedom and tolerance.
    Here's some more detail on how the book unfolds:
    The "psychological lens" here is Terror Management Theory (TMT), developed by these authors in the effort to test Ernest Becker's claim that the human fear of death is a source of "human evil." (See especially his Pulitzer Prize winning Denial of Death.) Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg explain how that research was conducted (over about a 15 year period) and present the findings. These chapters can be challenging for those unfamiliar with psychological research methods, but their frequent summaries and conclusions keep the reader on track as the evidence accumulates in support of Becker's claims and TMT. Next, the authors use TMT to analyze the American confrontation with terrorism on September 11, and our responses to it, both individually and collectively. Then they explore the causes of terrorism, adding to their psychological analysis, historical, religious, political and economic factors that must be considered. Here too, the application of TMT leads to some unexpected insights. In the end, their concluding suggestions point towards comfortably familiar "American values" but with uncomfortably honest reminders of the challenge they present us.
    14 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Daniel Liechty
    4.0 out of 5 stars Plumbing the Depths of Terror
    Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2002
    In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror (Washington: American Psychological Association, 2002), Tom Pyszcynski, Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg.
    Many have observed that America will never be the same in the wake of the terrorist attacks on US soil on the morning of September 11, 2001. The sudden impact of the explosions, captured in vivid detail and replayed over and over again on television, fundamentally altered the illusion of invulnerability that Americans had enjoyed since World War II. Beginning almost immediately a host of Middle Eastern analysts and academics of all stripes supplied an endless stream of hypotheses concerning "why they hate us" and the general nature of terrorism, all in a well-meaning effort to come to terms with a national tragedy.
    But to plumb the depths of terrorism one must look beyond the sound bites, beyond the narrow focus on Middle Eastern politics, beyond popular opinion concerning the supposed differences between Islamic and Judaeo-Christian cultures. This is one of the chief accomplishments of In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror. Its authors have succeeded in recasting the psychology of terror against a general theory of human nature. Working in the tradition of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, they trace the roots of terrorism to the troubling yet inescapable reality of human mortality. Becker long ago proposed that there exists at all times a latent fear of death that threatens to upend societal equilibrium. To shield ourselves from the ever-present threat of death anxiety, we seek to bolster our self-esteem through group loyalty. Hence competing worldviews threaten us at a very deep level.
    Becker's prolific publications were hailed by many as brilliant and garnered him a Pulitzer Prize (for his 1973 classic, The Denial of Death). But he was unable to gain widespread acceptance within the academy. His interdisciplinary methodology ran contrary to the emerging trend toward specialization. And there was the recurring criticism that his bold and far-reaching ideas, while intriguing, were ultimately untestable. Like many pioneering visionaries, Becker's death was followed by a period of neglect and dormancy.
    That changed with the appearance of three social psychologists (Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg) who possessed the ingenuity to do what others said could not be done: put Becker's ideas to the test. Their results demonstrate conclusively that Becker's ideas are not only theoretically compelling, they are empirically verifiable. Years prior to the devastating events of 9/11, they were testing and developing what came to be called "terror management theory." Fine tuning Becker's ideas, they discovered, among other things, a clear and testable relationship between the awareness of mortality and hostility toward those who appear to subscribe to a different worldview. More specifically, they found people who were asked to consider their mortality would be more favorably predisposed to people who shared their basic world view, and conversely, more negatively predisposed toward outsiders of one kind or another. These findings fit both the surge in patriotic hoopla and the hostility toward foreigners in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
    While acknowledging that "terrorism results from the interaction of a wide range of social, political, ideological, and psychological forces," the authors set out to "illuminate the psychological aspects of the problem" (p. 187). The result is a veritable calculus of depth psychology that identifies the factors inclining groups toward violence. Drawing from their cumulative research efforts (spanning over 150 empirical studies) the authors provide a concise overview of their research (Chapters 1-3), then proceed to apply their findings to the social and cultural milieu of post 9/11 America (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 is devoted to the application of terror management theory to Islamic extremists, while Chapters 8 & 9 point to the way out of the cycle of violence. Acknowledging the enormity of the issues and the gravity of the current socio-political state of affairs, the authors suggest that hope resides in new, more inclusive worldviews that are neither too rigid nor too diffuse.
    Much has been written concerning Becker's allegedly bleak view of human nature and his seemingly macabre fascinations with humanity's destructiveness. But those familiar with his writings can attest to his great compassion for the human condition and the reverence for the "life force" that sustained his long descent into the night. "In ways that are yet unknown to us, this spirit will continue giving birth to its own possibilities" (Becker, Angel in Armor, p. 118). In the Wake of 9/11 adds another important chapter to the story Becker so urgently wanted to tell.
    25 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2016
    Fantastic Read
    Helpful
     Report
  • Daniel Liechty
    5.0 out of 5 stars Living history!
    Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2002
    Written with a rare combination of wise hesitation and committed passion, this book has so much to commend it is difficult to know where to start. In short summary, this book presents a well-argued 'take' on current political terrorism, as well as public reaction to that terrorism, from the perspective of Terror Management Theory (TMT). TMT is an increasingly important area of social psychology that was originated explicitly as an attempt to subject Ernest Becker's main ideas to empirical testing. The robustness of the theory is now causing many heads to turn that 20 years ago quickly passed over Becker's ideas as 'speculative philosophizing,' unworthy of serious attention from social scientists. One of the great values of this book is that they have taken all of this two decades' worth of research and boiled it down to two concise chapters, in which they both lay out the research results itself in coherent format and discuss its significance in the context of Becker's wider theories and relating it to other current material in the social sciences. In subsequent chapters, as they lay out the psychology of terror, focusing both on the terrorist mentality itself, but even more so on the public reaction to the events of 9/11, the theory genuinely springs to life with cogent illustrations of each point from the very newspaper headlines we have all been recently reading ourselves. The feeling is that of reading 'lived history' in which the reader is also an intimate actor as well as an interpretive observer. This is easily the most riveting interpretive account of these events I have seen in the growing mass of 9/11 literature.
    16 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • Dan Van Damme
    5.0 out of 5 stars Favourite book of the year
    Reviewed in Canada on June 13, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Amazing work. Read the worm at the core as well.
    Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report