Death anxiety and attitudes toward the elderly among older adults: the role of gender and ethnicity

Abstract

The article investigated the relationship between death anxiety, attitudes toward older adults, and personal anxiety toward one's own aging in a group of 197 older men and women. As predicted, negative attitudes toward other older adults were predicted by personal anxieties about aging and death, and, more specifically, fear of the unknown. In addition, several distinctive anxieties were noted for particular subgroups of respondents. Older women scored higher on the Fear of the Dead subscale of the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS) than did men. Caucasian participants displayed higher Fear of the Dying Process than did older African American participants. Lastly, older African American participants reported higher levels of death anxiety on 3 of the subscales of the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (Fear of the Unknown, Fear of Conscious Death, and Fear for the Body after Death) when compared with older Caucasian participants and also tended to accord less social value to the elderly. These findings are interpreted in terms of patterns of socialization, and their implications for end-of-life care preferences are noted.