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.