Death anxiety and death denial: Nigerian older adults' metaphors of personal death

Ansiedad de muerte y negación de muerte: metáforas de muerte personal en personas mayores nigerianas

Ninety-two Nigerian men and 120 Nigerian women older adults completed Templer's (1970) Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) and Feifel and Nagy's (1981) death fantasy measure of positive and negative death metaphors. They were each also asked to write his or her own metaphor of personal death.

Results of the DAS showed that the two groups did not differ significantly on the level of conscious death anxiety, but the mens' scores were significantly higher on both positive and negative personal death metaphor scales. Also, significantly more Nigerian men wrote personal metaphors of their own and more often used a neutral metaphor to describe their personal death. Nigerian women more often used a positive or a negative metaphor. The men thus evidenced less death denial than the Nigerian women did. Implication for health and human rights are briefly discussed.