<P> Another paradigm that TMT researchers use to get at unconscious concerns about death is what is known as the death thought accessibility (DTA) hypothesis . Essentially, the DTA hypothesis states that if individuals are motivated to avoid cognitions about death, and they avoid these cognitions by espousing a worldview or by buffering their self - esteem, then when threatened, an individual should possess more death - related cognitions (e.g., thoughts about death, and death - related stimuli) than they would when not threatened . </P> <P> The DTA hypothesis has its origins in work by Greenberg et al. (1994) as an extension of their earlier terror management hypotheses (i.e., the anxiety buffer hypothesis and the mortality salience hypothesis). The researchers reasoned that if, as indicated by Wegner's research on thought suppression (1994; 1997), thoughts that are purposely suppressed from conscious awareness are often brought back with ease, then following a delay death - thought cognitions should be more available to consciousness than (a) those who keep the death - thoughts in their consciousness the whole time, and (b) those who suppress the death - thoughts but are not provided a delay . That is precisely what they found . However, other psychologists have failed to replicate these findings . </P> <P> In these initial studies (i.e., Greenberg et al. (2004); Arndt et al. (1997)), and in numerous subsequent DTA studies, the main measure of DTA is a word fragment task, whereby participants can complete word fragments in distinctly death - related ways (e.g., coff_ _ as coffin, not coffee) or in non death - related ways (e.g., sk_ _l as skill, not skull). If death - thoughts are indeed more available to consciousness, then it stands to reason that the word fragments should be completed in a way that is semantically related to death . </P> <P> The introduction of this hypothesis has refined TMT, and led to new avenues of research that formerly could not be assessed due to the lack of an empirically validated way of measuring death - related cognitions . Also, the differentiation between proximal (conscious, near, and threat - focused) and distal (unconscious, distant, symbolic) defenses that have been derived from DTA studies have been extremely important in understanding how people deal with their terror . </P>

According to terror management theory what is the primary motive of human beings