Deathbed scene narratives: A construct and linguistic analysis

The present study explored temporal and self/other dimensions of death atti tudes among young adults. One hundred seventy-two undergraduate students we re randomly assigned to I of 4 conditions: writing about one's death (agr u nspecified), one's death as a young adult, the death of another (age unspec ified), or the death of other as a young adult. Results indicated that the death of another, but not of oneself, was associated with more realistic co nsiderations of death (e.g., pain, negative emotions). In addition, partici pants who wrote about death at an early age were less likely to describe th eir own deaths with negative emotion or to discuss physiological aspects of death and were less likely to express romanticized notions of death. Impli cations of these results for death anxiety research are discussed.