Attitudes towards Death: Age, Regional and Gender Differences

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Abstract

The paper presents research data on attitudes towards death among intellectuals -students and academic staff of arts and humanities universities of Moscow, Yerevan and Rome, i.e. cultural centers where Christian confessions have traditionally been predominant. The degree of optimism/pessimism in the subjects' attitudes towards death was assessed with an approved scale, the full version of which is reproduced in the paper. Regional differences in the subjects' attitudes towards death can be interpreted not only in terms of cultural- historical traditions, but also in terms of modern social economical settings of different regions. Age (youth/maturity) and gender differences are closely related to the regional ones. In Rome, the level of opti- mistic attitudes increases with age, while in the post-Soviet countries it tends to decrease and become ambiva- lent in late adulthood, as it is in Moscow and Yerevan. At the same time, in Rome high levels of optimistic atti- tudes towards death are typical both for men and women, whereas in Moscow and in Yerevan ambivalent atti- tudes are mostly common for men and for women respectively.

General Information

Keywords: attitudes towards death, intellectuals, youth and maturity, regional specifics, gender differences.

Journal rubric: Empirical Research

Article type: scientific article

For citation: Kulagina I.Y., Senkevich L.V. Attitudes towards Death: Age, Regional and Gender Differences. Kul'turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya = Cultural-Historical Psychology, 2013. Vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 58–64. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.)

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Information About the Authors

Irina Y. Kulagina, PhD in Psychology, Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3095-4329, e-mail: kulaginaiu@mgppu.ru

Lyudmila V. Senkevich, PhD in Psychology, associate professor, chair of social, general and clinical psychology, faculty of psychology, Russian State Social University, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: lvsenkevich@mail.ru

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