Constructions of death and levels of death fear

Abstract

Sixty students were administered the Threat Index (an instrument derived from personal construct theory) and Feifel's measures of the conscious level, the fantasy level, and the nonconscious level of fear of death in order to investigate both the relationship of the Threat Index to the various death-fear levels and to assess the extent of interrelationships among Feifel's three levels. Although the total amount of relationship was low, the Threat Index appeared to be related to all three of Feifel's levels but found its strongest relationship at the conscious and fantasy levels. In terms of the Feifel measures, there seemed to be some indication that two, not three, levels were being assessed—perhaps conscious versus nonconscious. The lowest degree of relationship was found with the below-the-level-of-awareness measures. Unexpectedly the Threat Index demonstrated a vigilance effect on the nonconscious level; high-threat students reacted faster to death words. A relatively high amount of convergent validity R = .64 was demonstrated for the Threat Index when the level measures were entered as predictor variables in a step-wise multiple regression analysis.