Thinking about the Unthinkable: The Relationship between Death Anxiety and Cognitive/Emotional Responses to the Threat of Nuclear War

Abstract

In order to evaluate the relationship between death anxiety and cognitive/emotional responses to the threat of nuclear war, 345 college students completed the Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) and a multifaceted questionnaire which included items concerning personal reactions, predictions, and opinions about nuclear war. Full sample correlations as well as multivariate analyses of high and low death-anxious groups indicated that death anxiety was positively related to nuclear anxiety, but negligibly associated with perceptions of political efficacy and support for specific strategic policy proposals. Moreover, although students in both groups indicated that it was “unlikely” that they would survive a nuclear war, in comparison to low death-anxious participants, those with high death anxiety reported a significantly lower desire to survive such a war. Results are discussed with regard to information-seeking coping strategies, repressive defensive structures, post-nuclear death perceptions, and the need for additional empirical research.