College Students' Responses to Traumatic Events Involving Sudden Death

Abstract

The present study investigated undergraduate college students' responses to traumatic death events portrayed in video clips. We extracted a 1-minute clip from Final Destination and a 5-minute clip from Final Destination 2. The control groups viewed either a 1- or 5-minute clip of a nature video. The experimenter administered the DAS (Templer, 1970), before and then immediately following presentation of the videos, to measure any changes in death anxiety. The Myers/Briggs personality questionnaire (Myers & Briggs, 1962) measured personality type, and the Mood Survey (Underwood & Froming, 1980) and Ryburn/Festa Mood Survey measured mood prior to viewing the videos. We analyzed the data and obtained only a significant main effect for video duration. We also obtained a high correlation between the Mood Survey and the Ryburn/Festa Mood Survey.