Mother's milk: an existential perspective on negative reactions to breast-feeding.
Drawing from an existential perspective rooted in terror management theory, four studies examined the hypothesis that breast-feeding women serve as reminders of the physical, animal nature of humanity and that such recognition is threatening in the face of one's unalterable mortality. Study 1 demonstrated that mortality salience (MS) led to more negative reactions toward a scenario depicting a woman breast-feeding her infant in public, and in Study 2, MS decreased liking and increased physical avoidance of a potential task partner described as breast-feeding in another room. Further supporting the hypothesis that such reactions are rooted in threats associated with human creatureliness, MS in conjunction with a breast-feeding prime led to an increase in the accessibility of creaturely related cognitions (Study 3) and priming human/animal similarities (i.e., creatureliness) led to increased negativity toward a magazine cover depicting a woman breast-feeding her child (Study 4). Implications of this research are discussed.
Cox
Cathy R
CR
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, MO 65211, USA. crcr25@mizzou.edu
Goldenberg
Jamie L
JL
Arndt
Jamie
J
Pyszczynski
Tom
T
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001290:Attitude; D001293:Attitude to Death; D001942:Breast Feeding; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008895:Milk, Human; D009035:Mothers