MEASUREMENT OF EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES TOWARD DEATH

This research focuses on the measuring of implicit and explicit attitudes towards death. The work has been inspired primarily by the Terror Management Theory (TMT) which states that the fear of death is universal. People regard death as a menace and therefore tend to hide the fear in their unconsciousness where it can, however, still influence their behaviour. The thesis is based on previous studies which have shown that explicit and implicit attitudes towards death differ. The majority of existing studies on this topic is based on self-report techniques and there are only a few studies examining the implict attitudes. My research compares results of the Word Association Test (a method measuring implicit attitudes) and the Death Attitude Profile - Revised (DAP-R; a method measuring explicit attitudes). The research shows that for a human brain it is more difficult to process words associated with the death than neutral words, but there have not been found any significant correlations between the results of DAP-R and the Word Association Test. These findings match with the results of previous researches dealing with this topic.