Death attitudes in context of time perspective: adaptive, defensive and maladaptive views of death in young adults

Introduction: Death is the end of individual time, that’s why personal time perspective and, more broadly, selfcontinuity influences individual attitudes towards death. Objective: This article aims to distinguish adaptive, maladaptive and defensive attitudes toward death from the characteristics of individual time orientations, balanced time perspective and hardiness. Materials: the sample comprises 967 students from various cities of Russia (457 males, 503 females, 7 undefined, age 17-37, M=20, SD=1.97). Methods: Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, Hardiness Survey, short versions of Death Attitudes Profile Revised and Fear of Personal Death Scale. Results: the DBTP index (deviation from balanced time perspective) and general index of Hardiness contribute significantly into all parameters of death attitudes and fears, and determined from 1.2% of dispersion (for the “fear of consequences for personality”) to 15.8% (for the “escape acceptance of death”). More detailed regression analysis, which considered specific time perspectives and indices of hardiness allowed to determine the input of these values into the studied constructs more precisely: from 3...