Personifications of Death and Death Anxiety

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Abstract
University students (n = 165), graduate nursing students (n = 102), and funeral service students (n = 68) completed Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) and a Death Personification Exercise (DPE). Responses to the DAS and DPE were subjected to principal components factor analysis using varimax rotational procedures and the factor scores derived for each scale were intercorrelated. Prior to this comparison, DPE responses were contrasted using multiple discriminant function analysis. Results showed there was more communality than uniqueness in the factor structures. Interrelations between the nine common DPE and four DAS factors were generally low but did suggest that: (a) perceptions of death as a gay deceiver were related to a cognitive-affective component of death anxiety; while images of death as a gentle comforter or macabre figure were related to an awareness of the passage of time; and (b) reactions to death and descriptions of the activities of death were associated with concern about physical alterations.

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