Death Studies
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Death across the lifespan: Age differences in death-related thoughts and anxiety William J. Chopik To cite this article: William J. Chopik (2016): Death across the lifespan: Age differences in death-related thoughts and anxiety, Death Studies, DOI: 10.1080/07481187.2016.1206997 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2016.1206997
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Date: 29 January 2017, At: 03:31
DEATH STUDIES http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2016.1206997
Death across the lifespan: Age differences in death-related thoughts and anxiety William J. Chopik Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA ABSTRACT
Many studies have found age-related declines in death-related anxiety. Why do death-related thoughts and anxiety decline across the lifespan when exposure to, and likelihood of, death increase over time? In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey of 2,363 adults, death-related thoughts declined across the lifespan. In Study 2, a longitudinal study of 9,815 adults followed over a 4-year period, death anxiety declined across the lifespan. Further, greater social support predicted lower levels of death anxiety over time, after controlling for self-rated health and chronic illnesses. Close relationships serve emotion regulation functions to decrease death anxiety and thoughts across the lifespan.
As people age, they think about death more often. Over time, they also encounter more instances of death in their lives. People may see death depicted on TV and in movies. They eventually come to know someone who has died. Other people have a health scare that forces them to think about their own death. As such, it is logical to assume that people think about death more often and are worried more about it as exposure increases and personal death becomes more likely, especially in older adulthood. Interestingly though, the exact opposite is true—many studies have found agerelated declines in death-related thoughts and anxiety (Russac, Gatliff, Reece, & Spottswood, 2007). Age differences in death-related thoughts and anxiety Russac and colleagues (Russac et al., 2007)noted this paradox: “Why should young people, with their whole lives ahead of them, be overly concerned about death but older individuals, much closer to the end of their lives, express less anxiety?” (p. 556). The observation that death thoughts and anxiety decline with age has been replicated several times in different populations and among varying age groups (Cicirelli, 2001; Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999; Kalish & Reynolds, 1977; Keller, Sherry, & Piotrowski, 1984). Several explanations for this decline have been put forth. Some researchers suggest that older adults may be in denial about the aging process (Baum & Boxley, 1984). Other researchers suggest that people eventually come to terms with
CONTACT William J. Chopik © 2016 Taylor & Francis
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mortality and as a result do not fear it (Kastenbaum, 2002). Some suggest that death anxiety might be lowest among older adults who are very sick and infirm, for whom life is no longer meaningful or pleasant and that these individuals might even welcome death (Neimeyer, 1988). Yet other researchers suggest that death-related thoughts and anxiety might be highest in young adulthood because dying would have the largest implications for the bearing and raising young offspring (Russac et al., 2007). Together, these studies suggest that death anxiety is tightly tied to existential concerns about one’s future, whether it is their literal future (aging and health) or the evolutionary future (i.e., of their offspring; Scott & Weems, 2013; Weems, Costa, Dehon, & Berman, 2004). Terror management theory (TMT) provides some explanations for why death is so anxiety provoking, which might also provide reasons for why death anxiety is lower in older adulthood (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). TMT posits that individuals are motivated to alleviate the thoughts and concerns that arise from the knowledge that death is inevitable. This is consistent with theorizing by Tillich and other researchers who posit that death is an individual’s ultimate concern, signaling the end to their existence, which causes considerable anxiety (Scott & Weems, 2013; Weems et al., 2004). To deal with this anxiety, people often cling to cultural worldviews and close relationships as an effort to connect with something that extends beyond their physical life (i.e., cultural worldviews; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004). Cultural worldviews
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 316 Physics Rd., East Lansing, MI 48824.
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are shared conceptions of reality that provide life with a sense of meaning that transcends physical death (Arndt & Vess, 2008). Many of the studies experimentally inducing death-related thoughts center on the increased degradation of outgroup members as a way of bolstering one’s cultural worldview, although these effects are not always found among older adults (Maxfield et al., 2007). However, inducing death-related thoughts also results in greater relationship seeking and striving, which has the potential to bolster self-esteem—another goal that individuals undertake to reduce existential anxiety (Greenberg et al., 1986; Śmieja, Kałaska, & Adamczyk, 2006). In fact, even priming values of social relationships and having a disposition toward forming close relationships buffers against the negative effects of death-related awareness (Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992; Mikulincer & Florian, 2000). For example, activating thoughts of close loved ones after mortality is made salient reduces people’s tendency to derogate outgroup members who criticize their worldview (Cox et al., 2008). Close relationships reduce the effects of mortality salience through bolstering an individual’s self-esteem and psychosocial resources (Arndt & Vess, 2008; Schimel, Landau, & Hayes, 2008). Because individuals invest more in close relationships over time, age-related declines in death anxiety could result from increases in relationship investment and the accompanying increases in self-esteem (Chopik, Edelstein, & Fraley, 2013; Knee, Canevello, Bush, & Cook, 2008). Indeed, older adults often respond to reminders of their mortality by becoming more prosocial and generative (Maxfield et al., 2014). As such, social support in close relationships is likely associated with declines in death anxiety over time according to TMT as it reduces existential concerns through self-esteem building and cultural worldview affirmation (Arndt & Vess, 2008). The prediction that social relationships would decrease death anxiety over time is also consistent with observations made by socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). As individuals age, there is an increasing sense that one’s time becomes more limited. As such, individuals focus more on present-oriented goals that maximize well-being at the expense of future-oriented goals that maximize the acquisition of information and broadening one’s horizons. One of the best ways to maximize well-being in old age is to invest in positive relationships with close loved ones rather than negative relationships or relationships with acquaintances. Age differences in preferences for social partners reveal that older individuals prefer interacting with familiar social partners whereas younger individuals prefer interacting with novel social partners (Carstensen, 2006; Carstensen, Fung, &
Charles, 2003; Carstensen et al., 1999). In fact, when time perspective is experimentally manipulated by having individuals think that time is unlimited, age differences in these preferences disappear. In one such study, participants who were instructed to think of an impending ending were more likely to choose to spend a half hour of free time with a familiar social partner (e.g., a family member) compared to participants who were instructed to think of time as “open-ended,” who preferred spending time with a recent acquaintance or an author of a book they just read (Fung, Carstensen, & Lutz, 1999). As such, social support in close relationships is likely associated with declines in death anxiety over time according to research based on socioemotional selectivity theory.
Study hypotheses Many studies have documented age-related declines in death anxiety (Keller et al., 1984). Other studies have shown few age-related differences in death anxiety, particularly in older adulthood (Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999). Yet other studies find increases in thoughts about death in older adulthood (Kalish & Reynolds, 1977). Thus, an examination of how death-related thoughts decline across the lifespan in a large, age-diverse sample is needed. Prior work has relied almost exclusively on cross-sectional data as well, leaving open the possibility of cohort effects in explaining age differences in deathrelated thoughts and anxiety. The current studies address this gap by using two large samples, one longitudinal, to examine how death-related thoughts and anxiety change across the lifespan. Based on previous work and theoretical predictions of socioemotional selectivity theory and TMT, it was hypothesized that death-related thoughts would be highest in young adulthood and lowest in older adulthood. A larger, conceptual question is why death-related thoughts and anxiety decline across the lifespan. Previous research has provided some potential mechanisms that are thought to drive changes in death anxiety over time. Rarely are such mechanisms tested though, leaving researchers unsure about the lifespan developmental processes that bring about changes in death anxiety. In Study 2, this gap was addressed by predicting changes in death anxiety from perceptions of social support and physical health. It was hypothesized that having higher levels of social support would lead to more dramatic declines in death anxiety over time. This prediction originated from previous research showing that close relationship striving and having a disposition toward close relationships reduces the frequency of death-related thoughts and their
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negative consequences (Mikulincer & Florian, 2000; Śmieja et al., 2006). Linear regressions are used to examine the association between age and death-related thoughts and anxiety in Studies 1 and 2. Changes in death anxiety over a 4-year period were examined by predicting death anxiety at Time 2 from death anxiety and social support at Time 1.
Study 1: Re-analysis of Chopik & Edelstein (2014) The purpose of Study 1 was to examine age differences in death-related thoughts in a large sample of respondents across the lifespan. Study 1 addresses the limitations of previous research in many ways. First, age is modeled continuously to track age differences in death-related thoughts across the lifespan and avoids extreme age group comparisons (Cicirelli, 2001; Freund & Isaacowitz, 2013). Second, an implicit measure of death-related thoughts was used, unlike previous research that used surveys that prompt individuals to think about their own death. Directing people to reflect on particular features of a stimuli (e.g., that older adults might die soon) can alter the evaluations people provide on surveys (see Schwarz, 1999, for some contextual effects that alter self-report responses). Implicit measures of death-related thoughts can capture how accessible these thoughts are at any given moment, unprompted. Participants and procedure Participants were 2,363 adults ranging in age from 18 to 88 years (Mage ¼ 36.17, SD ¼ 13.53; 70.2% were women) from two combined experiments reported in Chopik and Edelstein (2014; Studies 1 and 4). In these studies, participants were randomly assigned to complete measures on webpages flanked with either advertisements priming death-related thoughts (Condition 1) or a local university event (Condition 2). In the original studies, participants in the mortality salience condition reported more death-related thoughts compared to the control condition. Because age did not interact with condition (p ¼ .33), the two conditions were collapsed into one sample for the analyses reported below.
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could be completed with a death-related word (e.g., coff__; which could be completed as coffin or coffee). Death-thought accessibility was operationalized as the average number of death-related word completions. This word-fragment completion measure is an implicit measure of death-related thoughts. There were no age differences in the total number of words (both death and nondeath-related) completed in the fragment completion measure. Thus, age differences in death-thought accessibility cannot be attributable to age differences in cognitive ability.
Results and discussion To examine age differences in death-related thoughts, the linear effect of age and gender ( 1 ¼ men, 1 ¼women) were regressed onto death-related thoughts. Age was negatively associated with death-related thoughts (b ¼ .11, p < .001; bivariate r ¼ .11, p < . 001). As seen in Figure 1, older adults were lower in death-related thoughts compared to middle-age and younger adults. Although experimental condition did not moderate the effects of age, a figure plotting age by death-related thoughts separately by condition can be found in Supplementary Figure 1. Gender was unrelated to death-related thoughts (p ¼ .30). The quadratic (age2) and cubic (age3) effects of age were also computed from the centered effect of age and entered as predictors of death-related thoughts. Neither the quadratic (p ¼ .29) nor cubic (p ¼ .39) effects of age were significant, suggesting death-related thoughts decline in a linear fashion across the lifespan. Like previous research examining age differences in death anxiety, implicit death-related thoughts declined across the lifespan (Thorson & Powell, 2000). Further, these age differences continued to decline into older adulthood, which runs against some research showing that death anxiety levels off in older adulthood (Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999). The mechanisms for age-related declines in death anxiety and thoughts are still unclear. One possible explanation, derived from TMT, is that close relationships help quell existential anxiety and lead to lower death anxiety over time (Śmieja et al., 2006). Study 2 examined whether the quality of close relationships serve an emotion regulation function to decrease death anxiety over time.
Measures Death-related thoughts Death-thought accessibility was measured by a wordfragment completion task used in previous terror management research (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994). Of the 25 word fragments, six
Study 2 In Study 2, a large nationally representative panel study of older adults was used to test the hypothesis that social support decreases death anxiety over time. Two questions were of focus. First, the correlation between age
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Figure 1. Study 1: Age differences in death-related thoughts for individuals age 18 to 67 (N ¼ 2,363). Means for individuals above age 67 are not included in this graph as there were fewer than 10 participants at each age group. These individuals’ data are included in the analyses presented in the text.
and death anxiety was examined to see whether death anxiety continues to decline in older adulthood, which previous studies find mixed evidence for (Cicirelli, 2001; Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999). Importantly, the confounding effects of physical health on death anxiety were also controlled for. Second, the anxiety reducing effect of social support was examined. Older adults’ death anxiety was assessed twice over a 4-year period. Social support from spouses, children, family, and friends were used as predictors of changes in death anxiety.
Participants and procedure Participants were 9,815 older adults, ranging in age from 50 to 96 years (Mage ¼ 67.41, SD ¼ 9.08; 59.1% were women) from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Participants averaged 12.71 (SD ¼ 3.05) years of education. HRS is a nationally representative and prospective panel study that has surveyed more than 22,000 Americans aged 50 þ every 2 years (Sonnega et al., 2014). Data have been collected since 1992. The current study reports on psychological, health, and covariate data collected in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research is responsible for the study and provides extensive documentation about the protocol, instrumentation, sampling strategy, and statistical weighting procedures. In 2006, a random 50% of HRS respondents were selected and then visited for an enhanced face-to-face interview. In 2008, the remaining 50% of HRS respondents were visited for an enhanced face-to-face interview. Respondents received a self-report psychosocial questionnaire every other wave (every 4 years). Among
people who were interviewed, the response rate for the leave-behind questionnaire was 90%. Information about close relationships was assessed in 2006 and 2008. Death anxiety was assessed at both waves. Thus, two distinct cohorts were formed that had psychosocial assessments and health information at different waves (i.e., Cohort 1: assessed in 2006 and 2010; Cohort 2: assessed in 2008 and 2012). The cohorts were combined into one sample for the present analyses to increase statistical power and precision (Chopik, Kim, & Smith, 2015). Henceforth, the assessment points are referred to as Wave 1 (2006, 2008) and Wave 2 (2010, 2012) for the combined sample.
Measures Death anxiety Death anxiety was assessed with a single item. Participants were asked about death anxiety in the context of a larger questionnaire assessing anxiety (Beck, Epstein, Brown, & Steer, 1988; Wetherell & Areán, 1997). Respondents were asked how often during the past week they had a fear of death (i.e., “I had a fear of dying”) on a four-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (most of the time). Sources of social support Social support was indexed for the following relationships: spouses, children, family members (immediate family), and friends. Seven questions were asked for each relationship: (a) How much do they really understand the way you feel about things?, (b) How much can you rely on them if you have a serious problem?,
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(c) How much can you open up to them if you need to talk about your worries?, (d) How often do they make demands on you? (reverse-coded), (e) How much do they criticize you? (reverse-coded), (f) How much do they let you down when you are counting on them? (reverse-coded), and (g) How much do they get on your nerves? (reverse-coded). Participants responded to each question on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot). For immediate family, participants were directed to think of “any other immediate family, for example, any brothers or sisters, parents, cousins or grandchildren” to distinguish these relationships from spousal relationships and relationships with their children, which were asked immediately before these items. Responses were averaged and scored such that higher values corresponded to higher support from spouses (a ¼ .83), children (a ¼ .81), immediate family (a ¼ .76), and friends (a ¼ .70). Because linear regressions use listwise deletion (i.e., individuals with missing data are dropped from the analysis), there was a concern that any analysis would be limited to individuals who had a spouse, child, or immediate family. To address this, a composite was made to assess global social support across relationships. Participant scores on all 28 items were averaged together to yield one overall score of social support (a ¼ .76). Thus, if individuals had missing data on the spousal questions, their social support score was the composite of the relationships with their children, immediate family, and friends. In addition to this overall composite score, analyses were also conducted in which each source of support was entered (a) individually and (b) with the other sources of support to predict changes in death anxiety.
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Health measurements Health was assessed at Wave 1 using two different measurements. First, self-rated health was assessed with a single item, “Would you say your health is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?” Participants rated their health on a scale ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Second, an index of eight major chronic illnesses was computed for each participant at each wave. Participants were asked to report if they had been diagnosed by a physician with any of the following: (a) high blood pressure; (b) diabetes; (c) cancer or a malignant tumor of any kind; (d) lung disease; (e) coronary heart disease including heart attacks, angina, and congestive heart failure; (f) emotional, nervous, or psychiatric problems; (g) arthritis or rheumatism; and (h) stroke. Major health problems were summed so that higher values reflect more health problems.
Results and discussion The first question addressed was whether death anxiety continues to decline even in older adulthood. To test this question, we entered age, gender, self-rated health, and chronic illnesses as predictors of death anxiety at Wave 1. Similar to the effect found in Study 1, age was negatively associated with death anxiety, b ¼ .05, p < .001. Controlling for self-rated health chronic illnesses was particularly important as health could have affected the association between age and death anxiety because older adults have increasingly poorer health. Indeed, prior to controlling for health, chronic illnesses, and gender, age was unrelated to death anxiety at the bivariate level (r ¼ .02, p ¼ .12). This decline can be seen in Figure 2. This pattern was also found when
Figure 2. Study 2: Age differences in death anxiety for individuals age 50 to 90 (N ¼ 9,815). Means for individuals above age 90 are not included in this graph as there were fewer than 19 participants at each age group. These individuals’ data are included in the analyses presented in the text.
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examining the association between age and death anxiety at Wave 2 (not depicted). The quadratic (age2) and cubic (age3) effects of age were also computed from the centered effect of age and entered as predictors of death anxiety (controlling for self-rated health, chronic illnesses, and gender). Neither the quadratic (p ¼ .27) nor cubic (p ¼ .99) effects of age were significant, suggesting death anxiety declines in a linear fashion in later life. However, individuals with worse self-rated health (b ¼ .19, p < .001), more chronic illnesses (b ¼ .10, p < .001), and men (b ¼ .02, p ¼ .03) reported higher levels of death anxiety. The first hypothesis that death anxiety continues to decline into older age, after controlling for physical health, was supported. Previous research may have found discrepant findings because physical health had not been controlled for, as evident by a nonsignificant bivariate correlation between age and death anxiety. The next question addressed whether social support serves a terror management function in older adulthood. Specifically, it was predicted that higher social support at Wave 1 would be associated with lower levels of death anxiety over time. To test this question, a linear regression was run in which death anxiety at Wave 2 was predicted from death anxiety at Wave 1, social support (composite), self-rated health, chronic conditions, age, and gender. Residual variance in Time 2 outcome after controlling for initial levels can be interpreted as change in that outcome. The results from this linear regression can be seen in Table 1. As predicted, higher levels of social support were associated with lower levels of death anxiety over time. Follow-up regression analyses in which all sources of support (e.g., spouses, child, family, friendships) were entered simultaneously revealed that declines in death anxiety were most strongly associated with quality spousal (b ¼ .03, p ¼ .007) and friend (b ¼ .06, p < .001) relationships. Support from children was marginally associated with lower death anxiety over time (b ¼ .03, p ¼ .08); relationships with other family were unrelated to changes in death anxiety (p ¼ .27). The Table 1. Regression analyses predicting death anxiety at Wave 2 as a function of social support. Death anxiety Wave 2 Intercept Social support Death anxiety Wave 1 Self-rated health Chronic conditions Age Gender Note. N ¼ 9806. 1 ¼ women.
b
SE(b)
b
t
p
1.42 –.14 .43 –.08 .01 .001 .004
.07 .02 .01 .01 .01 .001 .01
–.08 .40 –.12 .03 .02 .01
–8.75 43.34 –11.47 2.60 1.71 .66
< .001 < .001 < .001 .009 .09 .51
F(6,9800) ¼ 487.61,
p < .001.
Gender:
1 ¼ men,
results were similar when excluding support from spouses (and then children) from the model.
Discussion The current studies examined age differences in deathrelated thoughts and anxiety. Previous work was replicated showing age-related declines in death-related thoughts and anxiety (Russac et al., 2007). These effects were found after controlling for self-rated health and chronic illnesses. In Study 1, death-related thoughts declined across the lifespan. In Study 2, social support predicted lower levels of death anxiety over time. Study 2 is among the first to examine predictors of changes in death anxiety over time. The results from these studies are consistent with existing theories highlighting that close relationships can serve emotion regulation functions as people age. Insights from TMT suggest that close relationships serve as a way to give our lives meaning and symbolically extend life when reminded about death (Maxfield et al., 2014; Mikulincer & Florian, 2000; Śmieja et al., 2006). Close relationships are also often the product of goals aimed at enhancing well-being in light of a shortening time horizon (Carstensen, 2006; Carstensen et al., 2003; Carstensen et al., 1999; Fung et al., 1999). As a result, the lifespan declines in death-related thoughts and anxiety are likely the result of increasing amounts of investment in close relationships over time. Interestingly, the fact that spousal, parent–child, and friendships predicted lower death anxiety over time is also noteworthy. Close relationships that serve attachment-related functions (e.g., proximity seeking, safe haven behavior) are more likely to reduce terror management responses (Mikulincer & Florian, 2000). Not surprisingly, relationships with spouses, adult children, and long-term friends may be more likely to be attachment relationships whereas relationships with more distant family members may be less likely to be attachment relationships. Future research can examine exactly why social support is associated with lower levels of death anxiety over time. It may be that close relationships increase selfesteem, which has been shown to be a buffer against existential anxiety (Schimel et al., 2008), reduce anxiety more broadly, instill a sense of security (Cox et al., 2008), or impose meaning and structure in our lives over time (Landau et al., 2004). It is likely that close relationships serve all these functions (and more). Unfortunately, many of the measures that could tease out these possible mechanisms were not present in either dataset. Future studies can examine the exact pathways through which close relationships reduce death anxiety.
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Follow-up studies can also examine the multidimensional nature of death anxiety among older adults. In Study 2, a single-item, face-valid measure of death anxiety was used. This single-item measure only assessed frequency of death anxiety and not intensity of death anxiety. Further, the time frame of the question asked about death anxiety within the last week, rather than at the moment individuals were completing the survey or their death anxiety in general. Death anxiety is often considered to be multi-faceted and can vary considerably in intensity. Indeed, there are several existing scales measuring death anxiety, and many of them distinguish between different sources of anxiety (Hoelter, 1979; Iverach, Menzies, & Menzies, 2014; Krieger, Epting, & Leitner, 1975; Lester, 1990; Templer, 1970; Weems et al., 2004). For example, Hoelter constructed eight different dimensions that people can vary on with respect to death anxiety. For example, fear resulting from dying a violent death (i.e., Fear of Death) is distinguishable from a fear of an unknown afterlife (i.e., Fear of the Unknown). Other subscales tap into a fear of decomposition and the physical aspects of death, being falsely declared dead, and dying prematurely without achieving important goals and experiences. Drawing on principles from Tillich’s theory on existential anxiety, Weems et al. (2004) formulated an Existential Anxiety Questionnaire that taps into anxieties about death, fate, emptiness/meaninglessness, and guilt/condemnation, which provides another useful model for thinking about death and existential anxiety. Future studies can examine the extent to which different fears about death are mitigated in the context of high quality social relationships. Many of the effects in the current study are relatively small in magnitude. With large sample sizes, smaller effects can be captured and more precise effect sizes can be estimated. However, large sample sizes may yield findings that are statistically significant but of little practical significance (Cohen, 1990). For example, associations between blood pressure and mortality, smoking and mortality, or aspirin use given to patients after a myocardial infarction to help increase survival, are less than 0.1 (Rutledge & Loh, 2004). Even though the size of these associations is small, they translate into meaningful changes in standard of care and policy because they save many lives at the population-level. Therefore, findings should be interpreted in light of how constructs operate in the real world and how they may lead to the accumulation of positive assets across the life span (Abelson, 1985). Future research can examine the associations between changes in death thoughts and anxiety and changes in health and well-being in older adulthood, as these
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processes likely accumulate over long periods of time. Perhaps being coordinated with changes in health and well-being can give more practical significance to changes in death thoughts and anxiety. Another limitation is the way in which the index of chronic illnesses was created. In the current study, the eight illnesses were summed, giving equal weight to each illness. However, different illnesses likely warrant different weights. For example, a person with heart failure may report a greater fear of death compared to a person with a mild case of arthritis. However, there was no data on the severity of each condition experienced. Luckily, subjective health status provides some insight into an individual’s quality of life with respect to health (Jylhä, 2009), and this was also controlled for in Study 2. Nevertheless, future studies can examine whether the onset of certain chronic illnesses are associated with concurrent increases in death anxiety. The current studies had many strengths. Both used large samples to examine age differences in deathrelated thoughts and anxiety. To date, these are the largest studies examining age-related declines in death-related thoughts and anxiety. In Study 1, an implicit measure of death-related thoughts was used, revealing that on average, the accessibility of deathrelated thoughts was lower among older adults. Study 2 was longitudinal in nature, enabling the test of social support as an antecedent to the declines in death anxiety over time. Self-rated health and chronic illnesses were added as covariates to control for the link between physical health and fear of death. The current studies also attempted to merge two disparate theoretical traditions—TMT/existential anxiety and socioemotional selectivity theory—to explain how close relationships might serve emotion regulation functions by decreasing death anxiety across the lifespan (McCoy, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2000; Weems et al., 2004). In closure, the fact that death anxiety declines across the lifespan has often surprised researchers. In the current studies, social support predicted lower levels of death anxiety over time, suggesting that social relationships provide an emotion regulation function for individuals as they age and are reminded of their own death. Future research can examine the mechanisms for why close relationships serve these functions.
Funding The Health and Retirement Study is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA U01AG09740) and is conducted by the University of Michigan.
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W. J. CHOPIK
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