Personality Characteristics of Volunteers for Thanatological Research

Abstract

In an investigation of volunteers for thanatological research, two hundred and thirty-seven college students were presented with the option of completing the Do-It-Yourself-Death Certificate (DIYDC) as a component of a test battery which included an omnibus personality inventory and measures of dissimulation, locus of control, anxiety and Machiavellianism. A total of seventy-five males and ninety-seven females completed the DIYDC. Completers demonstrated a tendency toward scientific interest in death, rather than morbid curiosity about it. There was no differential rate of completion as a function of gender, anxiety, dissimulation, locus of control or Machiavellianism. It was concluded that student volunteers for thanatological research constitute a reasonably representative cross section of student volunteers for general psychological research and that the usefulness of the DIYDC in death workshop settings may be reliably extended to large-sample survey research applications.

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