Delay of Gratification,Gender Role Attitudes,and Death Reflections Predict Death Anxiety

Abstract

Previous work has established that gender, age, and self-control can predict Death Anxiety (DA), the distress that centers around thoughts of one’s mortality. However, it has not been determined if DA is associated with Delay of Gratification (DG; a tendency to forgo immediate rewards to receive a more favorable outcome in the future), attitudes toward gender roles (as compared to gender identity itself), and Death Reflections (DR; positive goals that occur when contemplating death). To examine these relations, 131 adults (45% women; aged 23–67 years) completed questionnaires that assess these constructs. We found that greater DG, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and engagement with DR were all associated with reduced DA. Gender identity was not associated with any variable, including DA. Age correlated independently with DA, but not when included in the regression models. These results demonstrate that elements of self-regulation and prosocial attitudes may predict baseline DA.

Keywords

terror management self-regulation mechanical turk social roles egalitarianism

Becker (e.g., 1973) proposed that death anxiety (DA), or the emotional distress that occurs specifically in response to thoughts of death, is the driving force behind much of human behavior. More specifically, he postulated that much of the human experience can be distilled into a drive to avoid thinking about mortality (e.g., Becker, 1973). Inspired by the writings of Becker, researchers proposed Terror Management Theory (TMT) to empirically explore his postulations (Pyszczynski et al., 2015). Results of a substantial body of work suggest that people attempt to mitigate DA through two mechanisms: proximal defenses and distal defenses (Kosloff et al., 2019). Proximal defenses intervene against clear and present awareness of death that enter consciousness (e.g., exposure to death-related stimuli) by redirecting attention to other stimuli or focusing on other thoughts (Kosloff et al., 2019). Distal defenses reduce DA in daily life and are achieved by adhering to cultural norms and being defined as “successful,” thereby creating cultural identities, and fostering both a sense of belonging and self-esteem (Pyszczynski et al., 2004). In this model, culture provides a framework within which to be successful, increase self-worth, all of which can mitigate DA (Routledge & Juhl, 2010).

Despite a potentially outsize role in informing TMT-related research, individual differences in baseline DA have received comparatively little empirical attention. What is known about trait DA is that it is relatively stable over time (e.g., Sliter et al., 2014), and high levels of DA are associated with broad psychosocial and physical health problems (Iverach et al., 2014; Menzies et al., 2019). Individuals high in baseline DA are more susceptible to mortality cues than those low in DA (Gailliot et al., 2006; Sliter et al., 2014). Thus, determining the parameters that predict DA in the general population can not only improve our academic understanding of TMT, it can inform efforts to improve physical and mental health.

Self-Regulation and DA

Self-regulation is the ability to change one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavioral patterns for the purposes of goal attainment (McClelland et al., 2018). In an individualistic society, being able to regulate oneself for the purpose of goal pursuit is highly valued and is further associated with heightened self-esteem and reduced DA (e.g., Rutjens & Loseman, 2010). Two mechanisms that underlie self-regulation include Self-Control (SC) and Delay of Gratification (DG). Self-Control is the ability to immediately, consciously regulate or change a response to a stimulus, whereas DG is the ability and tendency to forgo an immediate small reward for a larger one at a later point in time (Fujita, 2011; Mischel et al., 2011). Self-Control can be understood as the behavior needed to attain short-term (proximal) goals and/or avoid immediate negative consequences, whereas DG can be understood as an ability to plan and regulate oneself to sustain this goal-directed behavior for the purposes of attaining a larger, future (distal) reward or avoiding long-term consequences (Reynolds & Schiffbauer, 2005). Thus, the mechanisms of self-regulation may reflect those of TMT, with one to manage immediate threats and one to sustain regulation over time.

Self-Control and DG have demonstrated unique contribution to behavioral, psychosocial, and physical health outcomes across the lifespan (e.g., Casey et al., 2011; Duckworth et al., 2013; Mischel et al., 2011). Intuitively, these improved outcomes should reduce DA by increasing the likelihood of survival, quality of life, and goal attainment. Although there is evidence to suggest that self-regulation is associated with reduced DA, just three studies have directly probed this relation in adults (Gailliot et al., 2006, 2007; Kelley et al., 2014). Across these studies, participants high in SC showed reduced susceptibility to mortality salience inductions (i.e., being made to think about death) compared to those low in SC. The teams involved in those studies postulate that those high in SC are able to use strategies to reduce DA, including focusing on other, positive stimuli, reorienting thoughts to those of personal self-worth, or engage in other emotion regulation strategies that reduce anxiety induced by thoughts of death (Gailliot et al., 2006, 2007; Kelley et al., 2014). These studies suggest that self-regulation is a key component to managing momentary mortality salience, yet no study has established the relation between trait DA and components of self-regulation, and DG has not been examined at all.

Age, Gender, and DA

In the United States, age has been found to negatively predict DA in cross-sectional (e.g., Cicirelli, 2002; Russac et al., 2007) and longitudinal studies (e.g., Chopik, 2017). In other words, DA generally decreases as people grow older. It is not entirely clear why increased age is associated with reduced DA. Some suggest that older adults, in general, can reflect on their life and acknowledge that they have realized many of societies’ goals and have “made peace” with their personal or professional imperfections and shortcomings, in turn reducing DA (Butler, 1963). Others suggest that, as adults age, death is more routinely experienced and becomes less of an anxiety provoking stimulus (Ryff & Dunn, 1985). Though the mechanism remains unclear, age is an important consideration when probing individual differences in DA.

Women generally report greater DA than men (e.g., Bassett, 2017; Eshbaugh & Henninger, 2013; Pierce et al., 2007; Russac et al., 2007), though not always (e.g., Chopik, 2017).¹ An explanation for gender-related disparities in DA remains elusive. Previous researchers have offered reductionistic and/or problematic explanations for the women in their sample reporting greater DA. For example, Russac et al. (2007) posited that women’s heightened DA may be due to being more emotional and honest than men, and that women in their 20s worry about “bearing and raising offspring” (p. 577) more so than men. Bassett (2017) suggested that women serve as caregivers for the ill, elderly, and/or dying, and, as a result, may view death as more personal and salient. These proposals ignore numerous valid psychosocial concerns that women experience that may contribute to DA. Namely, compared to men, women are more likely to die under preventable circumstances, including being murdered by intimate partners (Fridel & Fox, 2019), failing to receive adequate life-saving interventions during medical crises (Blewer et al., 2018), or have physical pain disregarded or misdiagnosed leading to avoidable downstream injury or death (Hampton et al., 2015). There is increasing awareness that binary gender identity is an antiquated and problematic basis for psychosocial research (Hyde et al., 2019; Reilly, 2019), and that seemingly extends to research into DA. Even biological differences between men and women are decreasingly relevant to health outcomes, especially when controlling for other psychosocial variables (Anderson et al., 2017; Spagnolo et al., 2020). It is incumbent to identify the psychosocial and sociocultural risk factors and inequities that explain why women generally experience more DA than men and then work to address these gaps

Attitudes toward gender, or the degree to which one believes that gender identity should or should not correspond to prescribed social functions (Boehnke, 2011), may better explain physical and mental health outcomes than binary gender identity. They may also explain some of the disparities described above regarding DA. For men, highly structured gender roles promote cavalier attitudes toward risk taking, health, and mortality while also promoting violence and subjugation of women (Heise et al., 2019; Kaya et al., 2019; Weber et al., 2019). For women, rigid gender roles can promote victimization, restraint, fear, and powerlessness (Heise et al., 2019). On the other hand, egalitarian gender role attitudes have been linked to improved life satisfaction (Soltanpanah et al., 2017), reduced aggression (Casey et al., 2020), and improved mental health outcomes (Jaehn et al., 2020) for all genders. Greater egalitarian gender role attitudes, compared to rigid ones, should correspond to reduced DA regardless of gender identity. Surprisingly, no study has established whether, and how, these variables are related.

Death Reflections and DA

Death reflections (DR) are thoughts concerning death that can lead to positive behavior (Cozzolino et al., 2004; Yuan et al., 2018). Past research has focused on the negative, anxiety producing aspects of death cognition and has largely ignored the possible positive, growth-oriented, humanistic results of contemplating mortality (Cozzolino et al., 2004; Vail et al., 2012; Yuan et al., 2018). Contemplating mortality has been found to increase health-related choices, including smoking cessation (Martin & Kamins, 2009), sunscreen application (Routledge et al., 2004), seatbelt fastening (Popham et al., 2011), HIV testing (Grover & Miller, 2014), and more. However, it may be reductionistic to suggest that the only positive outcomes of thinking about death are related to improving one’s own health and prolonging one’s own life. Yuan and colleagues (2018) constructed the DRs Scale as an attempt to measure positive aspects of death cognition. The authors found DR to be positively associated with prosocial attitudes and life satisfaction. They also found that DR was associated with reduced DA, although the negative correlation was not significant. Studies since then have shown DR to be positively associated with DA (Curseu et al., 2021). Death Reflection could be an informative variable to better understand DA. An important first step is to determine whether, and, how DR and DA are correlated.

Current Study

Whereas much research is concerned what predicts greater DA, the main goal of the present study is to establish whether some emerging predictors of physical and mental health (DG, egalitarian gender attitudes, and DR) are associated with reduced DA. Comparatively little is known about baseline DA and its antecedents. Establishing the relation of these constructs to trait DA, without mortality primes, in the general population can inform our understanding of these constructs and, ultimately, inform psychosocial efforts aimed at reducing mental distress and worries about death. To achieve these goals, we analyzed the self-report measures of a sample of adult participants (n = 131) who completed inventories that assess these constructs. We argue that these psychosocial traits share a theme of a desire for equity and trust, rather than dominance, which should correspond with reduced DA. Thus, we hypothesized that, in addition to the established finding of older age and male gender identity, DG, egalitarian gender attitudes, and DR would be negatively associated with DA.

Methods

Participants

We recruited 152 participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) system (described further below). We limited recruitment to individuals living in the United States to avoid possible cross-cultural effects of DA and the other variables of interest. The inclusion criteria for the study were being 18 years of age or older, living in the United States, completing the study in at least 5 minutes, responding accurately to all five attention-check items scattered across the questionnaires (e.g., selecting “slightly agree” when the prompt was “please select ‘slightly agree’ for this item”), indicating that they were at least “slightly” honest,² and believed that their data should be included in analyses (and noting they would still be reimbursed regardless of their answer to these items). Of the initial sample, 22 (14%) of the submitted surveys were removed for missing at least one attention check item. An additional two participants identified their gender as non-binary and were omitted due to statistical underrepresentation. The remaining 131 participants met all inclusion criteria.³ Participants were 23–67 years old with a median age of 35.0 years (M =35.5, SD = 11.6). About 50% of the sample were between 30 and 46 years old, 30% were between 23 and 30 years old, and the remaining 21% were between 50 and 67 years old. Forty-six respondents (43%) identified as cisgender women and the remainder identified as cisgender men. Men and women were comparably represented, χ² (2) = 1.29, p = .256. Additional description of the sample can be found in Table 1. Compared to national norms, the sample was significantly overrepresented by individuals identifying as White, heterosexual, married, and/or a college graduate (all χ² > 130, ps < .001).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for the Sample.

	N (%)
Gender
Men	72 (55.0)
Women	59 (45.0)
Ethnicity
Hispanic or Latino	17 (12.9)
Not Hispanic or Latino	113 (86.3)
Prefer not to answer	1 (0.8)
Race
White or European American	112 (85.5)
Black or African American	5 (3.8)
American Indian or Alaska Native	1 (0.8)
Asian	10 (7.6)
Two or more races	3 (2.3)
Sexual orientation
Straight or heterosexual	110 (83.9)
Gay, lesbian, or homosexual	4 (3.1)
Bisexual	16 (12.2)
Asexual	1 (0.8)
Education
High school diploma or equivalent	18 (13.7)
Associates degree (junior college)	13 (9.9)
Current undergraduate	2 (1.5)
Some college	2 (1.5)
Bachelor’s degree	81 (61.8)
Graduate or professional degree	15 (11.5)
Relationship status
Single	28 (21.4)
In a relationship	11 (8.4)
Engaged (living together or apart)	2 (1.5)
Married	82 (62.6)
Separated or divorced	7 (5.3)
Prefer not to say	1 (0.8)

Notes: Options that no respondent selected are not presented here; percentages may not add up to 100 due to rounding.

Measures

Demographic Information

Participants provided their age in years, gender identity, assigned sex, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, level of education, income and relationship status. Age was asked as a fill-in item (in integers) and all other variables were forced-choice, each with an option to prefer not to answer or “other” with a free-write section.

Delay of Gratification

The 35-item Delay of Gratification Inventory (DGI; Hoerger et al., 2011) measures DG across five domains (food, physical pleasure, social interactions, money and achievement). For this study, we used the composite score of the instrument, which had excellent internal consistency (α = .91). Sample items include, “I can resist junk food when I want to” and “I manage my money well.” Responses were collected on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Scores ranged from 35 to 175 where higher scores indicate greater trait DG (the tendency to delay immediate gratification).

Gender Role Attitudes

We included the 13-item Social Roles Questionnaire (SRQ; Baber & Tucker, 2006) to measure egalitarian (vs. traditional) attitudes toward gender roles. The SRQ contains two subscales that measure gender role attitudes across two constructs: transcendent (egalitarian) and gender-linked attitudes. The scale can be combined into a composite score, which was used in the current study, to assess an overall view of the importance of adhering to (or defying) prescribed gendered behavior and social roles. Questions include “People can be both aggressive and nurturing regardless of sex” and “Tasks around the house should not be assigned by sex.” Responses were collected on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Typically, higher scores reflect greater importance of prescribed gender roles. However, to match the direction of the remaining instruments in the battery, we reverse-scored the instrument for ease of presentation.⁴ Thus, in the present analyses, scores ranged from 13 to 65 where higher scores reflect more egalitarian views, and lower scores reflect more traditional views of gendered social roles. The current sample exhibited good internal consistency on the composite (α = .88).

Death Reflections

The 15-item Death Reflections Scale (DRS; Yuan et al., 2018) measures a drive toward positive behaviors (e.g., pursuing closer social connection to others) when contemplating mortality. Responses were collected on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The scale measures DR across five domains: motivation to help, to live, to put life in perspective, to be remembered, and to connect to others. We used the composite scale of the DRS, which had excellent internal consistency (α = .90). Sample questions include “When I think about death, I want to be a better person” and “When I think about death, I wonder how I will be remembered.” Scores range from 15 to 75, where higher scores correspond to greater tendency to engage with DR.

Death Anxiety

We measured DA with the 53-item extended Death Anxiety Scale (DAS-E; Templer et al., 2006). The DAS-E is one of the most widely-used, psychometrically sound measures of DA (Zuccala et al., 2019). Questions are answered on a true and false scale. Sample questions include “I am anxious that I may die soon” and “I am afraid to fall asleep because I might die.” Each true response was coded 1 and false was coded 0 (and vice-versa for five reverse-scored items). We used the composite score for the instrument. Thus, possible scores on the scale ranged from 0 to 53, where greater scores indicate greater DA. Internal consistency on this instrument was excellent (KR 20 = .96).

Procedures

All procedures were approved by our Institutional Review Board. The survey was posted on Amazon’s MTurk, an internet marketplace that facilitates virtual tasks and gives researchers access to individuals who complete brief “hits” (i.e., tasks such as surveys) in exchange for a small reimbursement. MTurk has a history of providing better quality data from more diverse samples than from undergraduate research pools (e.g., Hauser & Schwarz, 2016). Once selected, and after completing consent procedures, participants completed the measures described above and in the same order. At the completion of the survey, the participants were thanked, debriefed on the goals of the study, and provided resources to contact if they felt in any way distressed. The median time to complete the study was 12.3 minutes (M = 14.6, SD = 7.94). Participants were reimbursed $5 if they passed all data quality checks described above.

Data Analysis

First, to establish the relation of each of the variable of interest, we conducted a series of Pearson correlations. Then, to address the main hypotheses of the study, we conducted hierarchical multiple regression with DAS-E scores entered as the dependent variable with two cumulative models of independent variables: (a) gender and age, and (b) DGI, SRQ, DRS. Analyses were conducted with jamovi 1.8.2 (the jamovi project, Sydney, Australia) and SPSS 27 (IBM, Inc., Armonk, NY). The datasets used in the present study are available at this link: https://osf.io/8cdsk/. There were no missing data in the present dataset.

Results

Descriptive statistics for the instruments and results of correlations are presented in Table 2. As hypothesized, DA was negatively correlated with age, DG, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and DRs. Unexpectedly, there was a sizable positive correlation between DG and egalitarian gender role attitudes. Age was also negatively correlated with DG and egalitarian gender role attitudes, though at a trend-level for the latter (p = .057). Gender identity did not approach significance as a correlate to any variable.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics and Results of Pearson Correlations for the Main Variables of Interest.

		M (SD)	1^a	2	3	4	5	6
1	Gender	--	—
2	Age	38.03 (11.59)	.06	—
3	DGI	119.09 (17.92)	.12	.17^*,c	—
4	SRQ	43.03 (9.53)^b	.13	.17^†,c	.46^***	—
5	DRS	37.00 (11.56)	−.14	−.06	−.02	.02	—
6	DAS-E	24.30 (13.62)	−.08	−.18^*	−.50^***	−.43^***	−.18^*	—

Notes: DGI = Delay of Gratification Inventory; SRQ = Social Roles Questionnaire; DRS = Death Reflection Scale; DAS-E = Death Anxiety Scale, Extended; DAS-E scores are true and false where each response marked true = 1

Values in this column represent point-biserial correlations (r_pb).

These values represent reverse scoring of the scale; as originally scored: M = 34.97, SD = 9.53.

These coefficients appear the same due to rounding and p-values differed due to their proximity to the critical r-value of |.172|: Age to DGI: r = .172, p = .049; Age to SRQ: r = .167, p = .057.

† p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01; ***p < .001.

The results of the hierarchical regression can be seen in Table 3. The upper part of Table 3 presents model estimates, and the lower part presents the regression coefficients within each model. As shown, the Model 1 (with gender and age only) was not a significant predictor of DA, though was at a trend-level (p = .084). However, Model 2 was significant (p < .001), improved model fit over Model 1 (p < .001), corresponded to a large effect size (f² = .52), and accounted for about 34–36% of the variance in predicting DA.

Table 3.

Results of Hierarchical Linear Regression with Three Models with DAS-E Scores Entered as Dependent Variable.

Model	Model Test	R	R²	Adj. R²		f²	Model Comparisons
1	F (2, 128) = 2.53, p = .084	.20	.04	0.02		.04	--
2	F (5, 125) = 13.02, p < .001	.59	.34	0.32		.52	Model 1 versus 2F (3, 125) = 19.29, p < .001ΔR² = .30
Variable	Model 1				Model 2
Age	−0.21 (−.18)*				−0.11 (−.09)
Gender	−1.77 (−.13)				−0.66 (−.05)
DGI					−0.29 (−.38)***
SRQ					−0.34 (−.24)**
DRS					−0.23 (−.19)*

Notes: DAS-E = Death Anxiety Scale, Extended; DGI = Delay of Gratification Inventory; SRQ = Social Roles Questionnaire; DRS = Death Reflection Scale; estimates of model fit are shown above, and individual regression coefficients are shown below; values are shown as B (β) and significance is based on unstandardized coefficients.

^*p < .05; ^**p < .01; ^***p < .001.

In examining individual predictors, gender did not approach significance as a predictor in either Model 1 or 2 (ps > .4). In Model 1, age negatively predicted DA (i.e., older age corresponded to lower DA), reflecting the correlation analyses. When the scores of the DGI, SRQ, and DRS were entered into the model (Model 2), age was no longer a significant predictor. Instead, the scores of the DGI, SRQ, and DRS each negatively predicted DA. Like in the correlation matrix, gender was not a significant predictor in either model.

Discussion

DA is a common human experience that is associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes (Iverach et al., 2014; Menzies et al., 2019; Sliter et al., 2014). It is important to understand factors that can lessen existential dread and improve wellbeing (Grossman et al., 2018; Menzies et al., 2018). This study is one of relatively few to probe individual differences in psychosocial variables associated with trait DA, and the first to specifically assess DG, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and DR. Consistent with hypotheses, the central finding of the present study is that greater self-reported DG, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and DR all corresponded with lower levels of DA. These findings emerged despite controlling for age and gender, both of which are established correlates of DA (e.g., Cicirelli, 2002; Russac et al., 2007). These results further our understanding what may underlie DA, providing potential targets for efforts aimed at reducing distress about death and increasing quality of life (Grossman et al., 2018; Menzies et al., 2018).

Psychosocial Variables

This is the first study to establish a negative association between DG and DA. This finding complements previous work that identified negative association between DA and SC (Gailliot et al., 2006, 2007; Kelley et al., 2014). Galliot and colleagues postulate that people high in SC may be able to reduce the emotional distress of death through distractions or other regulatory mechanisms (Gailliot et al., 2006, 2007; Kelley et al., 2014). In other words, people high in SC, compared to those low in SC, are better able to use proximal defenses to immediately pivot focal thoughts to avoid or reduce DA “in the moment.” Distraction is effortful and completed at the detriment of performance in other areas, and those with better developed SC can do such a task with greater ease than those low in SC (Gailliot et al., 2006). Whereas SC is necessary to avoid immediate threat to goals or attain immediate reward, DG is necessary to persist in those efforts and attain rewards in the future (Reynolds & Schiffbauer, 2005). We argue this focus on longer-term goals indexes distal defenses in the TMT model (Kosloff et al., 2019). Distal defenses are predicated on finding meaning, belonging, and other bases of transcendence (e.g., health, wealth, and achievement), which are, broadly speaking, some of the goals measured by the DGI. Thus, those with better DG are less likely to experience DA daily as they have comparatively strong distal defenses. Further bolstering this relation may be that individuals with higher DG, compared to lower DG, are simply more likely to have accomplished societally desirable goals, be in better health, and be higher status overall (Hoerger et al., 2011; Xu & Yin, 2020), all of which can reduce DA (Hayes et al., 2016). We only included education and income as a measure of goal attainment, neither of which meaningfully correlated with DG.⁵ As well, the main goal of this paper was to establish DG as a correlate to DA and we did not collect an assessment of SC. Including a more robust measure of accomplishment, as well as including measures of both SC and DG, are important avenues for future work related to DA.

The present study is also the first to establish that egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles correspond to reduced DA, even when controlling for gender identity itself. Men and women did not significantly differ on the SRQ composite.⁶ This finding supports the growing evidence that egalitarian attitudes toward gender predict positive physical and mental health outcomes at an individual, local, and national level (Arpino et al., 2015; Heise et al., 2019; Kaya et al., 2019; Weber et al., 2019). The mechanisms for these associations are not well understood, nor is it clear how one develops or adopts an egalitarian attitude (Boehnke, 2011). It may be that rigid gender role attitudes reflect economic, social, and political conservativism, which are known predictors of increased DA (Jost et al., 2003, 2007). Conservatism can be thought of as an ideology centered on resistance to change, pessimism, and opposition to equality for the purposes of managing uncertainty (Jost et al., 2003). Conversely, egalitarianism is, by definition, rooted in disrupting rigid or traditional social roles and power dynamics, and is predicated on optimism and trust in the future and in others (Steckermeier & Delhey, 2018).

It is also possible that the SRQ indexed aspects of openness to experience in the Big Five model of personality (Lee et al., 2010), which is associated with political and social liberalism (McCrae & Sutin, 2009). Openness is also associated with reduced susceptibility to existential threat (Boyd et al., 2017; Jost et al., 2007). However, openness and egalitarian gender role attitudes are often weakly associated or are not associated at all (e.g., Butrus & Witenberg, 2020; George et al., 2011). Thus, gender role attitudes are a potentially unique contributor to DA. We did not include a specific measure of openness in this study, which is a clear next step for future work.

Consistent with hypotheses, we found that DR was associated with reduced DA. Yuan et al. (2018) also observed negative associations with DA, though they were not significant. The authors argued that DR and DA may operate on different cognitive processes as suggested by others (Grant & Wade-Benzoni, 2009). The present findings do not support that postulation. Death Reflection allows a person to use death in a positive, growth-oriented way rather than in a stigmatic one (Cozzolino et al., 2004). Thus, the present study provides further support that viewing death with positive outcomes and potential for growth may reduce DA (Vail et al., 2012). However, interpretation of this finding is limited given how infrequently it has been examined, and the one other available study that directly probed DA and DR using similar instruments found positive correlations (Curseu et al., 2021). Death Reflection is an emerging construct that could be informative for our understanding of DA, its moderators, and its antecedents.

It is notable that DGI and SRQ scores were the only two independent variables that correlated. Although unexpected, this finding makes sense. The authors of the DGI found a high correlation between the agreeableness factor on the Big Five personality inventory and the social factor of the inventory (Hoerger et al., 2011).⁷ Thus, egalitarian views toward gender could be considered a form of agreeableness. But the question remains: why are DG and agreeableness (in this case, egalitarian views toward gender) seemingly associated traits? Little work has been conducted examining this relation in adults. Children with greater self-regulation skills, especially goal encoding, have shown greater prosocial and egalitarian behavior such as sharing and turn-taking (e.g., Paulus et al., 2014). Elements of “trust” in others and optimism and trust in the future are common across DG and egalitarian attitudes (Michaelson et al., 2013; Steckermeier & Delhey, 2018). In other words, egalitarian views and DG both feature a belief that relationships, rather than dominance, is beneficial both individually and collectively (Islam et al., 2006). These beliefs seemingly also reduce DA.

Sociodemographic Variables

Like others (e.g., Chopik, 2017; Curseu et al., 2021), we did not observe the well-established pattern of women reporting greater DA than men (e.g., Bassett, 2017; Eshbaugh & Henninger, 2013; Pierce et al., 2007; Russac et al., 2007). In fact, men reported greater DA than women, albeit non-significantly, similar to some older research results (Cole, 1979). It is unclear why this discrepancy with previous work emerged. The samples in previous work were frequently students (e.g., Bassett, 2017; Eshbaugh & Henninger, 2013; Pierce et al., 2007) and/or featured much larger samples (e.g., Russac et al., 2007). It may be that this sample, who were mostly in their 30s, married, and college graduates, did not experience the same gender-related anxieties of younger adults and/or undergraduates. Additionally, Russac and colleagues (2007) observed that men and women only significantly differed in reported DA in their 20s and again their 50s, and their whole sample’s effect size (based on presented descriptive statistics) was small (d = .37). About 50% of the present sample were within an age where these differences may not be apparent, which potentially diluted the effects of gender seen in older and younger age groups. However, results of exploratory analyses in our sample that focused on these age groups resulted in almost entirely null effects of gender (see Supplemental Material). Taken together, given the small effect sizes reported previously and potential interaction with age, gender differences in DA may only emerge as statistically significant in larger samples and with greater representation of older and/or younger ages. We argue that this supports the position that binary gender is, at best, an uninformative basis for psychosocial research (Hyde et al., 2019; Reilly, 2019), especially into individual differences in DA.

Although significantly correlated with DA, and a significant predictor in Model 1 of the regression analyses (i.e., with only gender and age), our results indicate that psychosocial variables better accounted for the association between age and DA association (Models 2). One possible explanation for this is that attitudes toward death are evolving rapidly and may impact DA across demographics. Namely, death may not be the taboo topic it once was (Tradii & Robert, 2017; Zibaite, 2020), especially during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kim, 2020; Smilie, 2021), resulting in greater sociodemographic parity in DA prevalence. Individuals of all ages, therefore, may experience comparable levels of DA at the time of data collection. Nevertheless, together with the results of analyses with gender, these findings highlight that diverse samples are important, though basing research on sociodemographic identities alone is problematic without consideration of other variables (Hyde et al., 2019; Reilly, 2019).

Limitations

This study provides important insight into psychosocial predictors of DA, but there are several limitations to consider in interpreting these results. One important aspect of this study is that data were collected in the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic (April and May of 2021), which may have influenced people adopting more conservative views, including attitudes toward gender, and increased their DA (Rosenfeld & Tomiyama, 2021). Thus, these results may not reflect our respondents’ pre-pandemic (or post-pandemic) views of gender and death. We also did not include measures of personality (e.g., components of the Big-5), which some have found to overlap with some of the constructs of interest in the present study (e.g., Jost et al., 2007). Additionally, for simplicity, we did not present analyses of subscales of the instruments we used in the present study except as needed for clarification. It may be that there are, in fact, aspects of DA that are more sensitive to gender differences than others. As well, we used the SRQ’s original wording of “sex” instead of “gender” for consistency with previous work, though future work should consider rewording this assessment to the more acceptable and intended term of “gender.” Though our sample size was adequate to address our main hypotheses within a reasonable consideration of error, larger samples may have elucidated some smaller valid effects that were missed in the current study (Funder & Ozer, 2019). Additionally, the present sample was not as diverse as we had hoped, and we limited recruitment to the United States to avoid possible cross-cultural influence of DA and the other variables of interest. Future work should purposively recruit greater representation of ethnicity, race, nationality, relationship status, gender, and sexual orientation. In addition, though our sample was more age-diverse than many studies, giving greater generalizability across ages and non-undergraduates, some of our findings may not be consistent with other literature due to the underrepresentation of younger and older adults.

Conclusion

Death can be an unpleasant, anxiety-inducing topic, more so for some than others. The findings of this study provide insight into this anxiety and provide important implications for practitioners working with people struggling with DA. Our study found that people who engage in DG, have egalitarian gender beliefs, and view death with a growth-oriented mindset in turn have lower DA. These are potential targets for prevention and intervention work aimed at reducing DA. It may be possible that changing perspectives and/or behavior to be kinder and more patient can reduce existential anxiety.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-ome-10.1177_00302228221085177 – Supplemental Material for Delay of Gratification, Gender Role Attitudes, and Death Reflections Predict Death Anxiety

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ome-10.1177_00302228221085177 for Delay of Gratification, Gender Role Attitudes, and Death Reflections Predict Death Anxiety by Bryan J. Zampella and Erik M. Benau in OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying

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.

ORCID iD

Erik M. Benau

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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