A comparative study of death anxiety and death attitudes in Han and Tibetan ethnic groups

Abstract

This study compared the responses of 380 Han and 315 Tibetan respondents regarding their attitudes about death and factors influencing those attitudes using the Death Anxiety Scale and Death Attitude Profile-Revised. The results show that Tibetan respondents expressed more death anxiety, fear of death, death avoidance, and escape acceptance than the Han participants, while Han participants showed more neutral acceptance than the Tibetan participants. There was a significant interaction between age and gender around Approaching Death. In addition, the death attitudes of Han and Tibetan participants were influenced by religious beliefs, funeral experiences, and the way their families talked about death.

Acknowledgments

We express our sincere thanks to Dennis Merritt, Betty Jackson, Martin Schmidt, and Marc Archer for revising this article.

Additional information

Funding

This dissertation is supported by the National Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation of China [No.19BSH118], National Natural Sciences Foundation of China [No. 7181101039] and the Innovation Team of Dali University [SKPY2019303]