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Live well and die with inner peace: The importance of retrospective need-based experiences, ego integrity and despair for late adults' death attitudes.
Journal article

Live well and die with inner peace: The importance of retrospective need-based experiences, ego integrity and despair for late adults' death attitudes.

  • van der Kaap-Deeder J Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Electronic address: Jolene.van.der.Kaap-Deeder@ntnu.no.
  • Soenens B Department of Developmental, Social, and Personality Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
  • Van Petegem S Family and Development Research Centre, Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Neyrinck B Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
  • De Pauw S Department of Special Needs Education, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
  • Raemdonck E Department of Developmental, Social, and Personality Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
  • Vansteenkiste M Department of Developmental, Social, and Personality Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
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  • 2020-07-25
Published in:
  • Archives of gerontology and geriatrics. - 2020
Basic psychological needs
Death acceptance
Death anxiety
Ego integrity
Self-determination theory
English Given that prior research has provided evidence for the role of late adults' attitudes towards death in their mental health, we sought to understand its underlying sources. Guided by Self-Determination Theory and Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, two cross-sectional studies examined whether older individuals' psychological need-based experiences, as accumulated during life, relate to their death attitudes and whether their experienced ego integrity and despair play an intervening role in these associations. Whereas Study 1 (N = 394 late adults; Mage = 75.14; SD = 6.52; 62.9 % female) involved an assessment of need satisfaction only, in Study 2 (N = 126 late adults; Mage = 78.09; SD = 7.17; 61.9 % female) both need satisfaction and need frustration were assessed. Structural equation modeling showed that, across studies, experienced need satisfaction related positively to ego integrity and negatively to despair. Need frustration was related to despair only. In turn, ego integrity related positively to death acceptance and negatively to death anxiety, while despair related positively to death anxiety. Finally, the contribution of need satisfaction to death attitudes was mostly mediated by individuals' ego integrity. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/186491
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