Thanatologists View Death: A 15-Year Perspective

Abstract

This study examined the death attitudes of a number of prominent thanatologists over a 15-year span. In 1973, 40 (30 men, 10 women) invited participants at a conference on death and dying were surveyed concerning their attitudes toward dying and death using Feifel's Death Attitudes Questionnaire, a Death Semantic Differential Test, and a Death Metaphors Test. Fifteen years later, 25 (62.5 percent) of these individuals again gave their responses to the three measures. Analyses were limited to basic group comparisons because the original raw data were unavailable. Respondents were primarily behavioral scientists (64 percent), but sizeable minorities were from medicine/nursing (24 percent) and religion/philosophy (12 percent). They were about equally divided in the religious (45 percent) versus non-religious (55 percent) categories, and rated themselves as being fairly satisfied with themselves and life in general. Almost two-thirds reported some fear of death (64 percent at both time points), and only 20 percent indicated that the idea of their own death was “easy to accept.” Most (60–64 percent) reported a fear of the personal consequences of death, including pain and an inability to have experiences or complete projects, with the next most pervasive fear (36–40 percent) being the consequences to loved ones, including pain, loss, and financial difficulties. Concerning what occurs after death, about half of the respondents (48–52 percent) indicated that death is the end of existence, another 24–30 percent were uncertain and 16–17 percent believed in the continued existence of a soul. Death attitudes were remarkably stable over the 15-year interval. The major difference found was a lessening of death fear from 1973 to 1988 ( p < .002), that subjects attributed primarily to their ongoing conversations about death and dying (56 percent), and the deaths of family and friends (32 percent).