The Relationship of Sex-Role Orientation to Death Anxiety in Middle-Aged Males

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine how sex-role orientation was related to death anxiety among a group of middle-aged males. A nonprobability sample of 237 male volunteers between the ages of forty and fifty-nine, of whom 88.7 percent were engaged in professional occupations, completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) and Boyar's Fear of Death Scale (FODS). In addition, “death experience” was measured by three items and was employed as a control variable in determining the relationship between sex-role orientation and death anxiety. Results of this investigation indicated that “death experience” or the amount of contact the male has had with death was not related to death anxiety. Additionally, those middle-aged males with a traditional male sex-role orientation (high masculinity/low femininity) did not exhibit higher death anxiety scores than those males with an androgynous orientation (high masculinity/high femininity) as was predicted. Thus, in this sample of professional middle-aged males, the men with a traditional sex-role orientation did not differ from those males who were androgynous with respect to death anxiety levels.