Social Cognition, Vol. 30, No. 6, 2012, pp. 758–777 758 © 2012 Guilford Publications, Inc. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to William B. Swann, Jr., University of Texas, Department of Psychology, 108 E. Dean Keeton St., Austin, TX 78712-1043; E-mail: Swann@ mail.utexas.edu. SWANN AND BROOKS WHY THREATS TRIGGER COMPENSATORY REACTIONS WHY THREATS TRIGGER COMPENSATORY REACTIONS: THE NEED FOR COHERENCE AND QUEST FOR SELF-VERIFICATION William B. Swann, Jr. and Matthew Brooks University of Texas at Austin There is considerable agreement that threatening people’s beliefs may trig- ger compensatory activity designed to reaffrm the beliefs that have been challenged. Disagreement reigns, however, regarding the nature of the mechanism that underlies such compensatory activity. We propose that the desire for coherence that motivates self-verifcation processes underlies these processes. For example, research on self-verifcation has demonstrat- ed that just as people with positive self-views react to negative evaluations by amplifying their efforts to confrm their positive self-views, people with negative self-views react to positive evaluations by amplifying their efforts to confrm negative self-views. Further, whereas past research on self-ver- ifcation strivings demonstrate that coherence strivings motivate efforts to confrm negative as well as positive self-views, recent work on meaning maintenance activities indicates that people work to verify implicit as well as explicit self-views. . . . children are born with the expectation of finding a regularity. It is connected with an inborn propensity to look for regularities, or with a need to find regulari- ties. . . . This “instinctive” expectation of finding regularities . . . is logically a priori to all observational experience, for it is prior to any recognition of similari- ties . . . and all observation involves the recognition of similarities (or dissimilari- ties). (Popper, 1963, pp. 47-48) One way to appreciate the significance of Popper’s “regularities” or coherent pat- terns is to observe how people cope with incoherence. Deprived of a sense that their worlds are coherent, people will begin to question the bedrock assumptions on which their beliefs are based. If answers are not forthcoming, they will eventu-