“Anniversary Reaction”: Important Events and Timing of Death in a Group of Roman Catholic Priests

Abstract

The death dates of a sample of 1038 Roman Catholic priests from three dioceses were compared with dates of ceremonial (Christmas and Easter) and personal (birthday and day of ordination) anniversaries to test for relationships that might support either a social integration model (postulating a dip before and a rise after in number of deaths around special holidays or anniversaries) or the more psychological opponent-process model, which anticipates a rise and fall of deaths around special dates linked to the affective significance such events carry for the individual. The data were analyzed using chi-square tests for association. There were no meaningful patterns of death around any anniversary. These results suggest either that there is no association between time of death and important anniversaries, or that the important event may be so unique to each individual that it is not amenable to group analysis.