Zachary K. Rothschild

Role

Associate Professor of Psychology, Chair of Psychology Department at Bowdoin College

Bio Notes

Zachary K. Rothschild is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at Bowdoin College. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas, where his advisor was Mark Landau, placing him in the second generation of the Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski terror management theory school. His four research themes map onto documented institutional patterns. First, terror management theory and religion, anchored by the 2010 paper he co-authored in Personality and Social Psychology Review examining how religious faith functions as an anxiety buffer against mortality awareness. Second, the dual-motive model of scapegoating, which identifies two motives: people scapegoat either to reduce personal guilt and protect their moral self-worth, or to restore control over a complex environment. Third, the existential function of enemyship, which holds that attributing immense power to enemies satisfies the existential need for a structured and controllable universe over a random one. Fourth, self-serving moral outrage, where outrage at third-party wrongdoers functions as moral cleansing and personal meaning maintenance. No kinship claim is made anywhere in the research. His name is held as a name echo alongside other Rothschild and Rothstein instances in the investigation, at question band only. Band: Source-Cited (academic publication records, Bowdoin faculty page, Google Scholar).