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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Older adults and the fear of death
— the protective function of generativity | | Author(s) | Rochelle J Major, William J Whelton, Jeff Schimel |
| Journal title | Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 35, no 2, June 2016 |
| Publisher | Canadian Association on Gerontology, June 2016 |
| Pages | pp 261-272 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/cjg |
| Keywords | Ageing process ; Death ; Attitude ; Anxiety ; Theory. |
| Annotation | Terror management theory (TMT) posits that cultural worldviews function to allay concerns about human mortality. Preliminary research with older adults has indicated that seniors do not respond to death reminders in the same way as their younger counterparts. The purpose of the current study was to test a developmentally relevant construct that may buffer death anxiety in later life. It was hypothesised that Erikson's concept of generativity may encompass death-denying properties for older adults. In the study 179 older adults were recruited to determine if subtle mortality salience inductions would lead participants to rate their own generativity as higher than after a blatant induction, or no induction, after controlling for pre-induction generativity. As expected, participants exposed to subtle death primes rated themselves as having higher levels of generativity than the other two groups after co-varying pre-induction generativity. Explanations are discussed in light of the literatures on TMT and generativity. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160826231 A |
| Classmark | BG: CW: DP: ENP: 4D |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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