Abstract
The literature lacks a consistent pattern on the relationship between attitudes toward death and dying across occupations and recreational pursuits. The present cross-sectional study categorized a group of individuals engaging in a high-risk recreational activity (i.e., skydivers) on the basis of experience and classified them into student, intermediate, and experts. There were more negative attitudes of death and dying among student skydivers compared with more experienced skydivers. It was also found that expert skydivers had more negative attitudes toward death and dying on some of the measures compared with the intermediate level experienced skydivers. It may be the case that factors such as perceived personal control, overconfidence, and metacognition may be related to these observed differences between the two more experienced groups of skydivers. The possibility of the factors playing a role in skydivers’ attitudes toward death and dying should be taken into consideration in the training programs for skydiving.
Stekel (1923) claimed that all fears could ultimately be traced back to the fear of death. Similarly, Becker (1973) later asserted that the fear of death is the primary motivation behind almost all that we do as humans. Although these views may be exaggerated and lack empirical support at such a grandiose level, Feifel and Nagy (1981) explained that the fear of death or death-related anxiety, whether innate or gained through experience, is a global response that is experienced by almost everyone. Factors related to attitudes toward death have been an area of interest due to the increasing population of older people across most nations (Tomer, 2000). In response to the growing population of elderly, research on attitudes toward death and dying may be beneficial in terms of discovering strategies that can help improve the quality of living in the later stages of life, as well as in the development of interventions that can limit certain factors shown to increase death-related anxiety (Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999). As such, attitudes toward death have been explored by researchers for more than four decades, have been shown to be influenced by a variety of different factors, and continue to be an important topic of investigation for both theoretical and applied reasons (Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999; Neimeyer, Wittkowski, & Moser, 2004).
There are some examples of factors that appear to influence attitudes toward death in a consistent pattern and include sociodemographic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, and religiosity. With regard to age, Gesser, Wong, and Reker (1988) compared a sample of young, middle-aged, and older individuals and found that fear of death was high among the young, even higher among the middle-aged, and lowest among the elderly, demonstrating a curvilinear trend across the life span. In terms of gender, Dattel and Neimeyer (1990) reported a tendency for women to have higher death anxiety in general than men. Pertaining to ethnicity, a study on older individuals showed that Caucasians demonstrated higher levels of fear of the process of death than African Americans. African Americans, on the other hand, demonstrated higher levels of fear of the unknown, fear for the body after death, and fear of conscious death than Caucasians (DePaola, Griffin, Young, & Neimeyer, 2003). Lastly, those with strong religious beliefs have been shown to have lower levels of death anxiety, death depression, and death distress (Alvarado, Templer, Bresler, & Thomas-Dobson, 1995) compared with those with weak or no religious beliefs. Thus, there do appear to be consistent trends when examining the relationships between sociodemographic variables and attitudes toward death. There are other variables that have been investigated that have not provided a consistent pattern of findings.
Another area that has been used to attempt to gain a better understanding of attitudes toward death has focused on occupational or recreational pursuits. It may be the case that attitudes toward death may be related to a particular career or recreational activity although certainly no causal mechanism has been proposed because it could not be methodologically ascertained as to if a choice of occupation caused an attitude toward death or vice versa.
With regard to occupational choice, a number of studies reported a positive relationship between death-related occupations (e.g., suicide counselor or mortician) and fear of dying and death (Hunt, Lester, & Ashton, 1983; Neimeyer & Dingemans, 1980; Thorson & Powell, 1996) such that engaging in a death-related occupations was related to an increase in death anxiety. In contrast, other studies reported that engaging in death-related occupations resulted in a decreased fear of dying and death (DePaola, Neimeyer, Lupfer, & Fiedler, 1992; Thorson & Powell, 1991). Finally, there is also evidence that has reported no significant differences in death attitudes and one’s choice of occupation as demonstrated by a study by Lewis, Espe-Pfeifer, and Blair (1999–2000). This study compared three groups of different occupations in relation to death anxiety and denial scores. The first group was categorized as death risk (military personnel), the second group as death exposure (health-care employees), and the third group as low risk (college students). The results indicated no significant differences between the three groups on either of the measured variables. Thus, there is no clear pattern with regard to occupation and attitudes toward death. These contrasting findings may be a result of using different instruments across different groups of individuals, or perhaps there are other factors that have not been taken into consideration that may also be related to attitudes toward death.
There have also been inconsistent findings when examining recreational choice and attitudes toward death. Most of the studies within this category of inquiry have also reported no significant differences (Alexander & Lester, 1972; Feifel & Nagy, 1980; Schrader & Wann, 1999; Slanger & Rudestam, 1997). For example, Slanger and Rudestam (1997) examined individuals from four different recreational sports which included skiing, rock climbing, kayaking, and stunt flying; all activities in which error in performance can lead to debilitating injury or death. Participants in the study were categorized for each individual sport into extreme risk, high risk, or low risk, depending on the participant’s level of engagement in the specific sport. No significant differences in death anxiety between the three risk groups were reported.
Although the findings on attitudes toward death and occupation or recreation may be mixed across different types of recreational activities, a more consistent pattern of results may occur within a specific group of high-risk adventure seekers as a recent series of studies have shown some repeated findings (Griffith & Hart, 2005; Griffith et al., 2013). A study by Griffith and Hart (2005) compared death anxiety between 54 experienced collegiate skydivers (with a minimum of 25 jumps) and 54 college students who have never engaged in skydiving. The skydiving sample was categorized as high risk, while the college students were categorized as low risk on the basis of skydiving and groups were compared on fear of death. The analyses revealed that skydivers scored significantly lower on three out of four dimensions which included fear of death of self, fear of death of others, and fear of dying of others. Perhaps the most useful aspect of the study was that it provided an interpretation as to why a clear relationship was presented in their analyses while prior studies investigating similar phenomena related to attitudes toward death may have reported a different pattern of findings. Griffith and Hart explained that an important factor to consider may be perceived personal control over death. One group of participants in the study with lower fear of death scores was experienced skydivers. Skydiving is recognized as one of the most dangerous activities in the world (Pedersen, 1997); every time a jump is made, the individual is certain to die unless they engage in the appropriate action of deploying their parachute. The study accounted for differences in fear of death between the groups on the basis of perceived personal control. For example, skydivers, as opposed to other individuals who may be in high-risk situations like police officers or firefighters, have complete control over when they face death. In other words, skydivers choose if and when and where they exit the aircraft and when they deploy their parachute, whereas a police officer does not have control over what life threatening situation they may encounter and likewise, a firefighter does not have control over the conditions of the fire, where it will occur, or when the fire will occur.
A more recent study (Griffith et al., 2013) provided further support for the potential impact of perceived personal control. In their study, attitudes toward death and dying across several types of recreational activities in a sample of older individuals were investigated. These activities were classified as high death-risk (skydivers), high death-exposure (nursing home residents), high death-risk and high death-exposure (firefighters), and a control group. Analyses revealed that skydivers demonstrated the least fear of death and the highest death acceptance scores among all the groups. Skydivers were followed by firefighters who had less fear of death and higher death acceptance than both nursing home residents and controls. Furthermore, nursing home residents reported both the highest levels of fear of death and the lowest levels of death acceptance across all groups. The findings provided further support for the possible influence of perceived personal control. One explanation that the skydivers experienced less fear of death and higher death acceptance than firefighters, even though they are both involved in a high death-risk activity, might be attributed to the amount of perceived control the individual may be experiencing. In other words, although both the skydivers and firefighters are participating in the activity voluntarily, firefighters have less personal control over when and where the activity will take place, but rather they respond to an activity that has already been initiated. Griffith et al. (2013) also attempted to account for the differences found with death exposure. Skydivers rarely observe a fatality. In fact only one fatality occurs every 95,000 jumps (Griffith & Hart, 2002), as opposed to firefighters and nursing home residents, who are often exposed to severe injury or death. Therefore, exposure to death may also be an indicator as to why they present more anxiety about dying and death than skydivers. This also explains why the nursing home residents experience the highest amount of death anxiety when compared with the other groups as they have the least amount of perceived personal control and live in an environment surrounded by suffering and death.
Given the consistent pattern of results that have been reported among skydivers, it is of interest to investigate if attitudes toward death vary among skydivers. In other words, do individuals involved in a high-risk recreational activity have a stable attitude toward death, or does it change as a result of participating in skydiving? There are multiple ways to examine this question, and the most useful may be on the basis of experience. The two most common ways in which to conceptualize experience could be on the basis of the amount of time involved in the activity. In other words, one could use years of experience. A problem with using this as a factor is that someone may have been an active skydiver for 10 years, but after acquiring their skydiving license, may have only showed up at a dropzone a few days a year and made several jumps. A more refined measure of experience could be the total number of jumps that someone has accumulated during their skydiving career. The number of jumps someone has is more related to their involvement in the recreational activity and more related to the factors of perceived personal control. Specifically, a skydiver who completed 200 jumps during the course of 1 year will clearly demonstrate a better skydiving skill set compared with a skydiver who completed 200 jumps over a 10-year period (i.e., assuming approximately 20 jumps per year). This can simply be explained by practice effects and is certainly not specific to skydiving, but does apply to this form of recreation. This point is illustrated by the United States Parachute Association’s training manual (United States Parachute Association, 2013). The manual categorizes skydivers into proficiency levels by the total number of jumps they have, along with some other demonstrated skills. Their licenses are referred to as A (minimum of 25 jumps), B (minimum of 50 jumps), C (minimum of 200 jumps), and D (minimum of 500 jumps. To maintain one’s license, there is a minimum number of jumps that a skydiver has to complete during a calendar year in order to be able to make a solo jump. If a licensed skydiver does not make a jump within that timeframe, they need to complete a recurrency jump which involves retraining and a jump with an instructor to ensure that the noncurrent skydiver has the necessary skill set to jump solo. As one would assume, the time lapse for inactivity varies according to the level of experience one has such that a student skydiver must jump once within 30 days, A-license within 60 days, B-license within 90 days, and C and D licenses within 180 days, in order to be able to jump solo. This is evidence from a national organization regulating skydiving that more experience relevant to skydiving skills are related to the number of jumps rather than the number of years of involvement in the activity.
The ideal study to examine this research question would be to follow the careers of skydivers as they accumulated jumps. Following the career of skydivers would be an exercise in great patience because there is a very high dropout rate. Specifically, there are approximately 500,000 individuals who make a first skydive in the United States on an annual basis, but there are only about 500 D-licenses issued during that same time period so retention in the sport is very low (United States Parachute Association, 2015). This low retention would make it very challenging to determine if the views toward death and dying change across time for skydivers using a longitudinal design. Another approach that is more feasible is a cross-sectional view. That is the approach for the present study as skydivers was categorized as student, intermediate, and expert, based upon their experience as measured by the total number of jumps. It was predicted that the student skydivers would have more negative attitudes toward death compared with the more experienced groups because they do not yet possess the necessary skill sets to jump alone and therefore lack a high level of perceived personal control in that high-risk activity.
Method
Participants
Participants included skydivers who were students (N = 211), intermediate level (N = 166), and expert level (N = 216). Student skydivers were defined as those with 1 to 5 jumps, intermediate skydivers were those with 50 to 200 jumps, and expert skydivers were defined as those with more than 500 jumps. There were no age differences across the groups, and the average age of participants was 32.5 and 530 (89.3%) were males. All of the participants were Caucasian. The number of jumps for the student, intermediate, and expert were 1.2, 90.1, and 722.9, respectively.
Instruments
The most recent revision of the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (Lester & Abdel-Khalek, 2003) was used to assess four dimensions of the fear of death. The revised Collett-Lester Fear of Death scale is a 28-item instrument that measures four fear dimensions: death of self, dying of self, death of others, and dying of others. Each subscale has seven items, and the instrument instructs respondents to rate how disturbed they are by each item on a 5-point Likert scale, anchored by (1) Not at all to (5) Very. The score on each subscale can range from 7 to 35 with higher values reflecting increased levels of fear of death. The internal consistency reliabilities for the four fear dimensions (i.e., death of self, dying of self, death of others, and dying of others) were .86, .79, .84, and .84, respectively.
The Death Acceptance Scale (Klug & Sinha, 1988) is a 16-item instrument that measures two dimensions of death acceptance including confrontation and integration. Participants rated each item using a 4-point Likert scale, anchored by (1) Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. Each subscale has eight items, and scores can range from 8 to 32 with higher values reflecting a higher level of death acceptance. The internal consistency reliabilities for the two dimensions (confrontation and integration) were .84 and .81, respectively.
Procedure
Participants were recruited at multiple dropzones across the United States during a 1-year interval. The three groups of skydivers represented student skydivers with 1 to 5 total instructional jumps. A skydiver is categorized as a student until they meet the minimum requirements which include at least 25 jumps. For those training to be a skydiver, the first five jumps will always be under the direct supervision of an instructor. Thus, although they will be under a deployed canopy by themselves, instructors will be beside them either in the place or in the air during the time of deployment so they are under very close monitoring by instructors. All students completed a standardized first jump course in a training program as a first step to become a licensed skydivers which was one of two methods including accelerated free fall or instructor-aided deployment. Both of these methods require the student skydiver to make a solo skydive as opposed to a tandem skydive when an instructor is attached to an instructor. The student skydivers were not given the instruments prior to making a jump because there was a possibility of increasing anxiety by talking about death prior to their first skydive; thus all participants in the student group completed at least one skydive. All skydivers were provided the instrument prior to jumping in the day in which they agreed to participate. Skydivers were approached and asked how many jumps they had and if they fit in the criteria representing the categories of interest, they were asked to participate in the study. Approximately 93% of individuals agreed to participate. A convenience sampling method was used to gather the data. Participants were told about the nature of the study, were provided with a consent form and a two-page survey, and were asked to complete it.
Results
Fear of Death Subscale Means and Standard Deviations.
Note. Scores on each subscale can range from 7 to 35 with larger numbers reflecting higher levels of fear of death in that domain. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Scores in each row with different subscripts indicate significant differences between the means, p < .05.
Death Acceptance Subscale Means and Standard Deviations.
Note. Scores on each subscale can range from 8 to 32 with larger numbers reflecting higher levels of death acceptance in that domain. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Scores in each row with different subscripts indicate significant differences between the means, p < .05.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to expand upon previous research that examined whether or not attitudes toward death and dying vary as a result of different levels of experience in recreational activities that relate to death. The authors are unaware of other studies that have examined attitudes toward death and dying within a recreational group in a cross-sectional manner. Thus, the potential changes in how fear of death changes among skydivers over different experience levels were investigated. Our choice of skydiving was based on the fact that it is widely considered a high death-risk activity; as an individual may potentially die during each skydive if the appropriate procedures are not followed. Fear of death scores were obtained on three groups of individuals representing different levels of experience and included students, intermediates, and experts. The analyses revealed a consistent pattern showing that student skydivers had higher levels of fear of death and least death acceptance compared with more experienced skydivers. However, an unexpected pattern also emerged which showed differences between intermediate and expert skydivers. The findings suggest that experience in skydiving may be related to changes in attitudes toward death and dying.
It appears that after skydivers obtained some amount of experience by achieving an intermediate level of jumps, fear of death and dying appeared to decrease and death acceptance increased significantly when compared with the student skydivers. However, that pattern did not continue with experience beyond the intermediate level because as skydivers gained further experience and attained a level of mastery, fear of death modestly increased but still remained significantly lower than the student group as the opposite pattern was found for death acceptance. These findings provide further evidence in-line with recent research suggesting that fear of death decreases as a result of engagement in death-related activities (Griffith & Hart, 2005; Griffith et al., 2013), although the pattern is certainly not linear.
There are three possible explanations that may account for the curvilinear findings. First, the differences in attitudes toward death and dying among skydivers may be understood through the model of stress and coping presented by Folkman and Lazarus (1985). The model suggests that when an individual is confronted with a potential stressor (i.e., skydiving), the individual’s perceptions of that stressor are influenced; these changes in perception are referred to as cognitive appraisals. Cognitive appraisals in turn mediate the way in which the individual responds to events related to the stressor. According to Folkman and Lazarus, cognitive appraisals of a potential stressor can be divided into two stages: primary appraisals and secondary appraisals. In the first stage, the situation encountered is assessed as irrelevant, benign positive, or stressful. If the situation is assessed as stressful (which is surely the case in skydiving), it is than identified by the individual as one of the following: threat (potential for harm or loss), challenge (potential for growth, mastery, or gain), or harm loss (injury already done). As such, it is likely that student skydivers have higher levels of threat, while experienced skydivers have higher levels of challenge. In regards to the two categories of experienced skydivers, the intermediate skydivers may actually encounter situations that should be perceived as stressful, but because they lack enough experience to make those fine distinctions, they may view the experience as irrelevant or even benign positive, whereas a much more advanced skydiver may view that situation as more stressful than the intermediate skydiver. A specific example may be a potential canopy collision. It may be the case that two skydivers deploy their canopy very close to each other after freefall and after deployment, the canopies begin to move through the air and perhaps they narrowly missed colliding with each other. This may be the first time this occurred for the intermediate skydiver and they may not have seen it before, whereas the experienced skydiver is likely to have either experienced it, seen a collision, or certainly heard about a collisions that resulted in negative consequences. Because of these varying experience levels, the expert skydiver may perceive this as more of a stressor, with limited perceived control because of not having control over the other skydiver, whereas the intermediate skydiver may perceive the situation as irrelevant or even a thrill and perhaps a perception of more personal control based on their limited experience.
In the second stage, the individual explores coping resources and options and determines whether or not the situation is within their ability to handle. The intermediate skydiver may actually have over confidence in their skills compared with the expert skydivers. Although the expert skydivers have more skills, they are also more cognizant of the parameters of their skill sets or limitations compared with the intermediate group. It may be that as skydivers gain experience through repeated exposure, their threat dimension decreases and their challenge dimension increases, which ultimately leads to a decrease in death anxiety (Griffith et al., 2013) up to a point, and then their threat dimension may actually increase so that dimension may be a curvilinear pattern. It is almost certain that with prolonged participation in a high-risk activity such as skydiving, one is bound to encounter either directly or indirectly through exposure from others, potentially dangerous or harmful situations that result in injury or death. Therefore, according to the model of stress and coping, this extended exposure for expert skydivers should lead to an increase in the threat dimension, and as a result, an increase in fear of death.
The second explanation to consider relates to Griffith and Hart’s (2005) suggestion that the decrease in fear of death among skydivers may be a product of perceived personal control. Skydivers have the luxury of choosing if and when they exit the aircraft, deploy the parachute, and where to land. Hence, when a skydiver completes several successful jumps without facing any difficulties and they do not witness others experiencing any apparent danger, their perceived personal control increases and as a result, fear of death decreases and death acceptance increases. This sense of choice may be associated with a belief among experienced skydivers that they have direct control over their risk of dying and death. This is supported by evidence from studies that show that continued preparation and professional experience are linked to a decreased fear of dying and death (Lester, Getty, & Kneisl, 1974; Yeaworth, Kapp, & Winget, 1974). Thus, among skydivers, the relationship between choice and fear of death may be related to experience. It may be that only after a few jumps, student skydivers hold the belief that they have little control over the skydiving environment because they do not have a thorough understanding of various factors involved with skydiving which could include the harness, main parachute, reserve parachute, aircraft, control over movements during freefall, control of the canopy, appropriate landing procedures, and the fact that the instructors make the decisions whether the student will jump. As more successful skydives are made without incident and skydivers gain a better understanding of the factors involved with the activity, they may have increased levels of perceived personal control in that environment and eventually are permitted to make their own decisions, pack their own parachutes, and decide when to jump or not. That is, they are essentially able to face and deny death at their choosing. However, as further experience is gained, exposure to threat will likely lead to a slightly more realistic view about the possible dangers of skydiving and a better understanding of factors related to injury and death is realized and there may be a decrease in perceived personal control because seasoned skydivers may have a better appreciation of factors they cannot control during the course of a skydive such as the aircraft, pilot, and other skydivers in the air. As such, this slight decrease in perceived personal control may well be associated with a modest increase in fear of death and decrease in death acceptance relative to the intermediate group.
A third account that may explain the findings specific to the differences between the intermediate and expert groups can be found in research by Kruger and Dunning (1999). In their study, they demonstrated that individuals with minimal experience, ability, or knowledge, tend to dramatically overestimate themselves relative to others, while individuals with greater experience, ability, or knowledge, tend to have a more accurate estimation of themselves, and how they compare to others. The reason this occurs, according to Kruger and Dunning, is due to differences in metacognition, as those who have difficulties in recognizing their own incompetence tend to inflate their self-assessments. In other words, those with some skills (i.e., intermediate-level skydivers) may lack the knowledge required to accurately assess themselves. And because they don’t know, they don’t know that they don’t know. Hence, those who lack experience, ability, or knowledge, are not in a position to adequately assess their own performance or that of others, and as a result, may believe they are performing well when in fact they are performing poorly. Intermediate skydivers may believe that skydiving is safe and that most everything is within their control (as a result of successful skydives), and consequently may be overconfident in their abilities, and have lower levels of fear of death. Yet, as they gain experience through continued participation and exposure and eventually reach an expert level, their perceptions adjust accordingly and their self-assessments become more accurate, resulting in a slight increase in fear of death as the results in this study demonstrated.
Although this study provides important insights regarding the relationship between a high-risk recreational activity and fear of death and death acceptance, there are several limitations that need to be noted. First, skydiver experience level was defined in terms of the number of jumps completed by each skydiver, and thus did not account for the distinctive type of experience of each skydiver. In other words, skydiver’s level of expertise was grounded solely on a quantitative basis and although a better measure than time involved in the sport, did not account for the quality of jumps made. In other words, a person who made 300 solo jumps probably has inferior in-air skills compared with someone who made 300 jumps with other individuals because one can use the others for feedback, and it is more of a learning environment for skydivers. Having a higher number of jumps does not necessarily translate into higher skill. Another limitation has to do with the design of the study. This was a cross-sectional design meaning that there was an assumption that differences between the experience levels progressed through the processes that were described with regard to changing levels of attitudes toward death with experience. It is possible that the groups differed on some other dimension rather than experience which was not measured in the present study, although age, gender, and ethnicity does not appear to be factors. To remedy this problem, a longitudinal study could be used although gathering an adequate sample size would take a considerable amount of effort and time given the high dropout rate of skydivers progressing to the expert level. This study is also limited by the theoretical accounts to describe the findings. Future studies of this nature should certainly collect measures on perceived personal control, stress, and coping, in an effort to directly test the theoretical underpinnings of the findings. This study provides data on what is happening and is descriptive in nature, but the next step should take a more detailed examination of the mechanism by which this process occurs. This study also holds some limitations in regards to the generalizability of the results. The data collected in this study were based on skydives completed at several dropzones in the United States. In the United States, there are hundreds of dropzones, and they do differ to some degree although there certainly are commonalities. In addition, this study only looked at skydivers as a high-risk group, and this process may or may not be applicable to other high-risk recreational pursuits or occupations.
This study provides evidence that engaging in a high death-risk activity such as skydiving seems to be related to changes in attitudes toward death and dying. More specifically, this study demonstrated that fear of death not only decreased and death acceptance increased with exposure but also remained different from student skydivers after a prolonged period of time, and the relationship is not linear. Moreover, our analyses indicated that levels of fear of death and death acceptance vary depending on the stage or level of experience achieved by the individual. Hart and Griffith (2003) reported that 86% of skydiving fatalities are due to human error. Although no known research has examined whether or not these fatalities and accidents are more common within a particular stage or level of experience, it may be the case that intermediate skydivers may be at particular risk and suffer from an overconfidence effect (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). The primary concern is related to the possibility of increased risk taking or overconfidence that may potentially lead to faulty judgments or perhaps even carelessness. Research suggests that among certain individuals, low death anxiety may be associated with increased risk taking (Cotter, 2003). Furthermore, Kruger and Dunning (1999) have demonstrated that overconfidence is most prevalent among those with less skills, which often results in faulty assessments and poor judgments. In the least of efforts, perhaps an increase in awareness about the potential dangers one can overlook during the intermediate level of experience among skydivers can aid in the prevention of poor decision making.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.