Poczucie sensu życia a postawa wobec śmierci

Abstract

The article presents empirical research which was conducted among young people aged 21–35. Two methods were applied (1) L. G. Crumbaugh and L. T. Maholick’s „Purpose in Life Test” and (2) „Inventory of Attitude toward Death” constructed by the author of this article. By using the first test with 250 respondents, two groups (each having 50 people) were distinguished. The first group contained those respondents with a low feeling of purpose in life (M=75.5) whereas those with a high feeling of purpose in life were placed in the second group (M = 122.6). „Inventory of Attitude toward Death” consists of a Likert-type scale, questionnaire and incomplete sentence test. The scale touches 8 dimensions of attitude toward death (separated by applying the Wroclaw taxonomy): Necessity, Centrality, Misteriousness, Value, Anxiety, Tragicness, Destructiveness and Absurdity. The reliability of the scale rtt = 0.74. Between persons with high and low feeling of purpose in life there are statistically significant differences in 4 dimensions: Necessity (p < .01), Centrality (p < .05), Misteriousness (p < .05) and Fear of Death (p < .05). They are not qualitative but quantitative differences. Persons with a low feeling of purpose in life experience more the necessity of death, its mysteriousness and anxiety. Intercorrelational analyses within each group were likewise conducted and it was observed for instance that among people with a low feeling of purpose in life, a more intensive preoccupation with death clearly correlated with anxiety toward death (p < .01). Three aspects of the attitude toward death, i.e. toward the death of someone else, someone close and of oneself, can be derived by the second part of „The Inventory of Attitude toward Death”. By thinking about death as a general phenomenon the feeling of change predominantes, by encountering the death of a close person – sadness, and the consideration of the possibility of one’s own death accompanied by anxiety and grief in the face of departing from the world. The level of the feeling of life’s purpose does not play any role in this area; a similar case is with the frequency of thinking about death because the giving of purpose to one’s own life is not a result of frequent thinking about death but rather a result of the quality of that thinking. By thinking about one’s own death both groups more often emphasize the wish to correct oneself (50%) and pose the question: „How to make use of my life to the maximum?” (19.3%). A basic variable, which determines the attitude toward death of the tested population, is not level of the feeling of purpose in life but rather is the temporary and psychological distance to one’s own death. Encountering death engages more the emotions and less the intellectual processes and particularly the self-regulatory mechanisms.