Collaborative Research: Theoretical extensions to advance understanding of the impact of the awareness of death

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The awareness of mortality weighs heavily on the human mind. Death is a universal reality, and one that is central to most contemporary issues people care about, such as healthcare, crime, terrorism, and climate change. In addition, the media exposes people daily to reminders of the fragility of life. Terror management theory explains how people cope with the psychological threat death poses. People do so by viewing themselves as valued contributors to a purposeful world rather than as mere animals that will no longer exist upon death. But the version of a purposeful world people cling to for psychological security varies greatly from person to person. Consequently, when death is close to mind, people become more positive toward others who share their own beliefs and more negative toward those who espouse different beliefs, such as members of other cultures. Studies have shown how these tendencies contribute to prejudice, intergroup conflict, and terrorism. More recent studies have shown how thoughts of death can also contribute to excessive materialism, the appeal of charismatic leaders, alienation from one's own body, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, phobias, and supernatural beliefs. These proposed studies will examine how associations among death, feelings of anxiety, and views of the self affect these defensive responses to thoughts of death. The planned studies will also be the first to assess the possibility that the effects of thinking about death in people for whom death is a more vivid reality might differ from the way it affects those who have less close contact with death. To examine this issue, the proposed studies will investigate the impact of thoughts of death on persons who have closely encountered death, specifically those in need of hospice care, those who provide such care, and those who have been through death awareness courses, and compare this impact with the impact on those without such intimate experiences with death. The proposed studies will test the prediction that more direct confrontation with death leads people to construe death more as part of their life process, thereby decreasing defensiveness and the association of death with anxiety, and increasing the association of death with self. The result should be a reduction or elimination in the kind of culturally defensive judgments that are normally associated with thoughts of death (e.g., less distrust of people from other cultures). The proposed research will help elucidate the way both young adults and people for whom death is a more imminent reality think about and cope with thoughts of death. In so doing, this work may suggest better ways for people from all walks of life to deal with the prospect of mortality. In addition to this societal goal, the more immediate impact of this work will be to help train the graduate students who assist in this research.