Death Anxiety

What it measures

Six items capture the level of fear and discomfort that a person experiences when exposed to a stimulus that brings thoughts of their own death to mind. The scale was employed across four studies by Huang, Huang, and Jiang (2018) and was originally developed by Huang and Wyer (2015) in work on mortality salience and variety seeking.

Response format

9-point Likert (anchors not specified in source)

Scale items

• The _____ made me feel afraid of thinking beyond the threshold of my death.
• The _____ brought up the upsetting idea that my entire personality would disappear forever with my death.
• The _____ made me think about the disturbing idea that I would never be able to think and experience after death.
• The _____ made me feel frightened by the idea that all my thoughts and feelings would stop when I am dead.
• The _____ elicited the fearful thought that I will be dead someday.
• The _____ evoked the disturbing idea that my body would disappear after my death.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

The alpha of .98 was consistent across all four studies. The blank in each item should be replaced with a description of the mortality-relevant stimulus (e.g., 'news story,' 'advertisement'). Anchors for the 9-point scale were not specified in the source article.

Citation

Huang, Z., Huang, X., & Jiang, Y. (2018). The impact of death-related media information on consumer value orientation and scope sensitivity. Journal of Marketing Research, 55(3), 432–445.

Keywords