Generativity and other buffers of death awareness in first responders

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) predicts that posttraumatic stress reactions occur when buffers of awareness of death, such as meaning in life, self-esteem, and social intimacy, fail to suppress overwhelming death-anxiety. In this study, we hypothesized that generativity may also serve as an effective buffer of awareness of death and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Design: The present study investigated the presence of anxiety buffering disruption in first responders with a spectrum of posttraumatic stress via a mediation path model of self-report measures of PTSD symptoms, anxiety buffer variables, and death-thought accessibility.

Methods: To investigate the role of anxiety buffering in PTSD, a sample of 986 first responders completed self-report measures of PTSD symptoms and anxiety buffer variables in randomized order, and a death-thought accessibility measure following random assignment to mortality salience (n = 290) or control (n = 302) conditioning.

Results and Conclusion: Results of structural equation modeling indicated PTSD symptoms have a small relation to increased awareness of death whereas anxiety buffering variables did not mediate the relation between PTSD symptoms and awareness of death. Nonetheless, generativity and meaning in life, self-esteem, and social support were significant predictors of lower levels of PTSD.

KEYWORDS:

• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• PTSD
• generativity
• anxiety buffer disruption theory
• terror management
• first responders

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and several anonymous reviewers for their comments on our paper, along with the many first responders who made this research possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Erin M. Buchanan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9689-4189

Notes

1 A reviewer suggested examining the relationship between age and generativity in our model. We found no relationship of age predicting generativity or the anxiety buffer in the model and only weak bivariate correlations of age and self-esteem in the control group (r = .12, p = .03) and with PCL in the MS group (r = −.13, p = .03).

Additional information

Funding

The Missouri State University Graduate College provided graduate thesis funding for this project.