In September 2023, so many individuals have been shocked when the well-known Sycamore Hole tree, thriving in a dip alongside Hadrian’s Wall, was intentionally minimize down in a single day. For a lot of, the tree symbolized British resilience, heritage and an everlasting historical past. The general public response was swift and intense, with widespread outrage and grief over the lack of this cultural landmark.
The two males convicted of felling the Sycamore Hole tree have been sentenced to 4 years and three months in jail. In the meantime, the tree lives on, because of an AI-generated alternate world within the movie 28 Years Later.
As a psychologist, I am all for what impressed such a robust response to the destruction of a single tree. One psychological clarification, referred to as “terror administration idea,” means that the emotional response displays deeper anxieties about dying—and never nearly this tree.
Terror administration idea, developed by psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, builds on the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Denial of Loss of life” (1973).
This guide’s central concept is straightforward but profound. In it, Becker proposes that our consciousness of mortality creates the potential for appreciable existential anxiousness.
To handle this, we depend on cultural worldviews. These are our perception methods. These worldviews might be spiritual, secular, political or nationwide. All of them share a promise that life is significant and provide prescriptions for a way we should always reside. Once we reside in accordance with our cultural values and requirements—whether or not by being an excellent dad or mum, a loyal citizen or following spiritual texts—we acquire a way of shallowness and really feel we’re contributing to one thing enduring and important.
These worldviews additionally provide the promise of immortality. Some accomplish that actually, as in spiritual faiths that promise life past dying. Others provide symbolic immortality, by lasting achievements, household bloodlines, or the continuation of 1’s nation. By embedding ourselves in these worldviews, we acquire a way that some a part of us will proceed after we die.
Cultural symbols resembling flags, spiritual icons, or perhaps a tree can embody our core values and collective identification and are due to this fact handled with deep reverence. All through historical past, folks have waged wars and proven intense emotional reactions to the desecration of such symbols (burning the American flag or the Qur’an, for instance).
The Sycamore Hole tree carried related significance. As a centuries-old landmark, it got here to characterize Britain’s heritage, energy and continuity. From the attitude of terror administration idea, its felling might have stirred robust reactions as a result of it reminded folks that even the symbols we depend on for a way of permanence might be instantly misplaced.
This sense of cultural loss can be echoed by different latest occasions, resembling Brexit and the immigration disaster. A collective concern over the erosion of British values and traditions locations questions concerning the lack of British identification on the heart of public consciousness.
Rooted in mortality
A long time of psychological analysis assist this idea’s claims. One frequent technique (a way referred to as “mortality salience”) entails making members subtly conscious of their mortality (management members should not reminded of dying).
In research carried out within the Nineties, researchers discovered that when the answer to a job required desecrating a cultural image, resembling utilizing an American flag to separate ink from a jar of sand, members reminded of dying took longer to finish the duty and skilled larger apprehension.
Lots of of research additionally present how being reminded of dying can improve anger and hostility in direction of individuals who threaten or violate one’s cultural values. One line of analysis analyzing reactions to those that commit ethical transgressions could also be notably applicable to this case.
As an illustration, in one research, members reminded of their very own dying have been extra more likely to assist harsher punishments for many who dedicated ethical transgressions, resembling somebody who destroyed an irreplaceable artifact (very like the chopping down of a tree). Different analysis has proven related results: members (together with judges), when reminded of dying, gave out harsher penalties or sentencing for many who had dedicated a criminal offense.
You would possibly query whether or not these results really replicate dying anxiousness or in the event that they may very well be defined with out invoking a want for immortality. Analysis might present compelling proof. One research discovered that reminders of dying elevated assist for harsher punishments for ethical transgressors (replicating the research talked about earlier).
Nevertheless, when members have been first introduced with proof of an afterlife, the impact of dying rising harsher punishments disappeared. In different phrases, the promise that dying isn’t the top appeared to buffer from the anxiousness that dying arouses.
The autumn of the Sycamore Hole tree was greater than a lack of pure magnificence. It was, for a lot of, a symbolic assault on permanence, on that means, and on shared identification. But whereas such losses can stir outrage and requires punishment, analysis additionally reveals that when folks endorse prosocial values like empathy, reminders of dying can really foster forgiveness in direction of those that commit ethical transgressions.
In response to terror administration idea, these responses should not nearly anger, however about what it means to be human within the face of inevitable dying. On this mild, the tree’s felling uprooted one thing sacred: a collective continuity that offers that means to our temporary lives. As we grieve its loss, maybe we’re additionally mourning one thing extra elusive—the comforting phantasm that some issues would possibly final eternally.
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Why the Sycamore Hole tree provoked such robust emotional reactions: A psychologist explains (2025, July 15)
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