PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BOYS AND GIRLS WITH DEATH ANXIETY


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Abstract

The paper studies psycho-emotional characteristics of adolescents with different types of attitudes towards death. The theme of death becomes especially relevant and requires understanding during adolescence, sensitive to existential fears. In adolescence, an attitude towards death is developed, which depends both on the individual experience of facing death and on other personal characteristics of an adolescent. In the future, this attitude can affect psychological health, the definition of the meaning of life, and the specifics of behavior. The paper analyzes the psychological ideas of fear of death and the factors of its occurrence and the characteristics of adolescence, describes the features of thanatophobia manifestation in teenage years. Based on a theoretical review, the author hypothesized that self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and attitude towards death affect the emergence of thanatophobia in adolescence. The empirical sample consisted of teenagers (N=172) from Novosibirsk schools aged 15–17 years, from which 70 boys and 102 girls are. The average age of survivors was 15.8 years (max=17, min=15). In the study, the researcher used the following techniques: D. Templer Death Anxiety Scale; the “Metaphors of personal death” method by J. McLennan; the Beck Depression Scale; the Kondash scale of socio-situational anxiety; and Dembo-Rubinshtein technique for measuring self-esteem. The dispersion analysis showed that differences in the level of ambitions, negative metaphors of death, and preoccupation with physical changes are significant in terms of gender-role. The correlation analysis identified the relationship between the perception of death and death anxiety.

About the authors

Olga Olegovna Andronnikova

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk

Author for correspondence.
Email: andronnikova_69@mail.ru

PhD (Psychology), Associate Professor, professor of Chair of General Psychology and History of Psychology

Russian Federation

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