Defensive Responses to Thoughts of Death in Older Adults

描述(由申请者提供)：恐怖管理理论认为，对死亡必然性的认识在追求生命的意义和价值方面发挥着重要作用，因此影响了非常不同的人类行为。超过300项研究为TMT的中心命题提供了一致的支持。在大多数TMT研究中，老年人比年轻人更接近死亡。此外，随着年龄的增长，人们经常会经历一些变化，提醒他们自己的死亡，并在他们所处的文化环境中威胁到他们的自我价值。这表明，随着年龄的增长，与死亡相关的担忧和问题可能会变得越来越令人担忧。然而，关于老年人如何处理死亡问题的研究表明，如果说有什么不同的话，那就是他们报告的对死亡的恐惧比年轻人少，而且越来越多关于老年人一般心理适应的文献表明，在大多数情况下，老年人比年轻人适应得更好。然而，其他研究表明，许多老年人经历了严重的焦虑、抑郁和认知僵化问题。这项拟议的研究有三个目标：第一，探索年轻人和老年人对死亡提醒的反应方式的异同。其次，通过调查认知僵化和一般心理调整方面的个体差异作为老年人如何应对死亡问题的可能调节因素，来考察一些但不是所有老年人过渡到不同形式应对死亡的可能性。第三，调查老年人和年轻人在应对死亡问题上使用截然不同的策略的可能性，老年人比年轻人更有可能依赖于社会情感的选择性、生成性、对后代的乐观以及对过去的取向。通过探索老年人如何适应他们离死亡更近的地方，这项工作将揭示影响老年人生活各个方面的应对策略的发展变化。鉴于对年轻人的研究表明，与死亡相关的焦虑在心理调整和紊乱、身体健康、人际关系以及适应生活变化的能力方面发挥着重要作用，这项研究对以后的健康、适应和幸福感有一定的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Terror management theory posits that awareness of the inevitability of death plays an important role in the pursuit of meaning and value in life and therefore affects a very diverse range of human behaviors. Over 300 studies have provided converging support for TMT's central propositions. Older adults are closer to death than the younger adults that have been studied in most TMT research. Further, with advancing age, people often experience changes that remind them of their mortality and that threaten their self-worth within the context of their cultural milieu. This suggests that death- related concerns and problems associated with them are likely to become increasingly troubling as one ages. However, the research on how elders deal with the issue of death suggests that, if anything, they report less fear of death than their younger counterparts, and a growing literature on the general psychological adjustment of older adults suggests that, for the most part, older adults are better adjusted than younger adults. Other research suggests, however, that many older adults experience significant problems with anxiety, depression, and cognitive rigidity. The proposed research has three goals: First, to explore similarities and differences in the ways young and old adults respond to reminders of death. Second, to examine the possibility that some but not all older adults have made a transition to a different form of coping with mortality by investigating the role of individual differences in cognitive rigidity and general psychological adjustment as possible moderators of how older adults cope with the problem of death. Third to investigate the possibility that older and younger persons use distinctly different strategies for coping with the problem of death, with older adults more likely to rely on socio-emotional selectivity, generativity, optimism for future generations, and an orientation toward the past than their younger counterparts. By exploring how older adults adapt to their greater proximity to death, this work will shed light on developmental changes in coping strategies that influence diverse aspects of older adults' lives. Given the strong evidence from research with younger adults that death-related anxiety plays a role in psychological adjustment and disorder, physical health, interpersonal relations, and the capacity to adapt to life changes, this research has implications for health, adjustment, and well-being in later life.