Cigarette Smoking and Fear of Death: Explaining Conflicting Results in Death Anxiety Research

Abstract

The purpose of these studies was to examine the relationship between death anxiety and smoking, and to explain the conflicting results of previous studies on this topic. In Study 1, students at a rural university were given a death anxiety scale and a measure of smoking behavior, counterbalanced for order. The same questionnaires were given to urban adolescents in Study 2. When college student smokers thought about their smoking behavior first, those who had smoked more recently showed higher death anxiety. Among high school students who had smoked, those with higher death anxiety reported smoking fewer cigarettes. In addition, mortality salience, induced by completing the death anxiety scale first, caused these high school students to report smoking less frequently. An integration of the results of the two studies with earlier research suggests that order effects and urban-rural differences can explain inconsistencies in the link between death anxiety and smoking.