Abstract
The death attitude and personality questionnaire was used to investigate and analyze Chinese undergraduates’ views on death. The results showed that: (1) The mortality concept of Chinese undergraduates is divided into nine dimensions, which sequence ranked from high to low according to their scores is unfinished feeling, interpersonal relationship, life review, calmness, life attachment, liberation, spiritual concept, terror and pain. This result is obviously inconsistent with Terror Management Theory (TMT), reflecting the characteristics of Chinese culture. (2) The mortality cognition of Chinese undergraduates is divided into seven dimensions, which sequence ranked from high to low according to their scores is body’s becoming cold, body’s decay, sensory loss, consciousness loss, loss of control, soul drift away, and body’s becoming stiffness. This result is consistent with TMT. However, the subjects’ statements about the cognition of the process of spiritual change at death salience reflected the color of Chinese culture, consistent with Taoist and Buddhist thoughts in Chinese traditional culture. This shows that there are the thoughts of death anxiety management in Chinese culture, which are of great value and Enlightenment to the effective development of life education.
Highlights
Death is the manifest destiny or final destination of all creatures, so that they have an instinct to seek life and avoid death
Analysis and Discussion 4.1 Analysis in the Mortality Concept of Chinese Undergraduates The results showed that only a small number of participants expressed terror and pain in the death priming paradigm, and 66% and 62% of the participants expressed the mortality concept related to unfinished feeling and interpersonal relationship, respectively
All of participants who referred to the dimension of Life Review (LR) expressed language fragments similar to that “I think that my mind will be recalling my past days”, which is a significant different with life review of the near-death experiencer
Summary
Death is the manifest destiny or final destination of all creatures, so that they have an instinct to seek life and avoid death. Pyszczynski and Solomon (1986) constructed Terror Management Theory (TMT) by their research in death anxiety, which pointed out that human beings have self-consciousness, which makes them aware of their own mortality and various events that lead to death. In order to relieve or even eliminate the negative emotions of death anxiety or terror and reduce the uncertainty, human beings try to manage them. When Mortality Salience (MS) is primed, it isn’t necessarily for Chinese subjects to perceive death as negative and personal, and to have symbolic behavior of escaping from their own death. On the contrary, they may show the views on mortality of a higher level of interpersonal dependence, and be able to treat death more rationally and acceptably. This research would boost the life education in China, and provide some guidance and reference for the effective development of life education and the prevention of suicide, especially the suicide and neglect of life of adolescents (Luo, Zhang, 2018)
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