THE HOT SAUCE EXPERIMENT

Picture yourselves in a university campus in the United States, at the close of the past century.

The vast lawns and well-warded garden paths, the faculties and dormitories, and other infrastructures of the university, as red brick neo-gothic or white neoclassical edifices scattered across these lush verdant lawns, hopeful young students chatting to one another as they walk along the paths on their way to class or read in the shade of the tall redwoods and buckeyes... This European writer is already conjuring up the quintessential 1980s/1990s US campus in her mind's eyes, as she types about the setting for what she considers one of the most relevant psychological experiments on young university students like she.

Psychology professors Solomon and Greenberg wondered if thinking about death would manipulate the minds of people in a similar way today that the depictions of the slain enemy as demonized has traditionally done in the creative arts.

So they conducted this unusual experiment to find out.

They started by dividing a group of students from their campus according to their ideology or political allegiance. Half were strong Democrat Party supporters, while the other half supported the Republicans.

The students were asked to dole out a portion of unbearably spicy hot sauce for someone to eat. First, they were told to do it for a fellow supporter of their favourite political party (the sauce would be served to an ally), and then, for a supporter of the party they opposed (the sauce would be served to an enemy). The students served on average the same amount of hot sauce, about 12 grams, regardless of whether it was intended for political friends or adversaries.

The psychologists then took another group of students, with a 50/50 ratio of Republican and Democrat supporters as well, but this time, the subjects were asked to read a series of questions designed to make them think of their own death. For instance:

"PLEASE BRIEFLY DESCRIBE THE EMOTIONS THAT THE THOUGHT OF YOUR OWN DEATH AROUSES IN YOU."

"JOT DOWN, AS SPECIFICALLY AS YOU CAN, WHAT YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN TO YOU AS YOU PHYSICALLY DIE."

When these students measured up the sauce for their political allies, nothing changed: once again, the portion average of 12 grams. But when they doled out the sauce for their political opponents, something extraordinary happened: this time, they measured out an average of 27 grams of hot sauce, more than twice the previous amount.

So, reminding people of their own deaths seems to drive them towards supporting those who share their values and opposing those who don't. And the experiment suggested that this is a universal human instinct, as relevant to modern-day students as to warriors, rulers, courtiers, and scholars through the ages.

"These results suggest that, when people are reminded of their own mortality, they are going to lash out at those who have a different belief system than their own, the idea being that when we think about our own death, we become more invested in our own belief system, and someone with a different belief system becomes psychologically threatening, and so we're gonna lash out at them, often with violence."

Across the centuries, disturbing images of death have been used to bind people to a cause.

So how does this instinct relate to Westeros, to Othello, to zealotry, to totalitarianism, to repression by both organized religion and state authorities, to the deaths of Elia Martell and her children, of Renly Baratheon, of Gustavus Adolphus, of Hypatia, of the countless victims of totalitarian regimes...?