General Beliefs about the World as Defensive Mechanisms against Death Anxiety

2007 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Ka-Ying Hui ◽  
Michael Harris Bond ◽  
Timmy Sze Wing Ng
Keyword(s):  
Death Anxiety ◽  
Mediation Model ◽  
Death Attitudes ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
Fate Control ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Cynicism ◽  
Defensive Mechanisms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Affective Dimensions

Death ideation and death anxiety represent the cognitive and affective dimensions of death attitudes, respectively. General beliefs about the world are proposed to be useful defensive mechanisms protecting persons against the death anxiety provoked by death ideation. SEM is employed to test the proposed mediation model, using a sample of 133 Hong Kong Chinese university students. Results showed that death ideation was significantly and inversely linked to belief in social cynicism, reward for application, and fate control. Moreover, higher levels of belief in fate control and lower levels of religiosity predicted greater death anxiety. Only belief in fate control partially mediated the relationship between death ideation and death anxiety. Discussion focused on how social axioms serve as useful defensive mechanisms against death anxiety.

scholarly journals The social axioms of populism: Investigating the relationship between culture and populist attitudes

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 438-455
Author(s):  
Waleed A. Jami ◽  
Markus Kemmelmeier
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
Fate Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cynicism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Alternative Solutions ◽  
Social Flexibility

Populism is on the rise with various movements having electoral breakthroughs. Most social-science research on populism has focused primarily on party tactics and rhetoric, and a definition for the term itself; only recently has populism emerged as a psychological construct. We contribute to this growing literature with two studies (n = 456 and n = 5,837) that investigated the cultural worldviews underpinned in populist attitudes. Using the social axioms model, an etic framework for assessing people’s generalized social expectations, we linked populist attitudes to universal dimensions of culture. We found that higher levels of social cynicism and social flexibility, and to a lesser extent, lower levels of fate control and reward for application predicted populist attitudes. These findings indicate that people who endorse populist attitudes, across a range of contexts, are cynical regarding the social world, believe in alternative solutions to social dilemmas, but may also perceive a world that is difficult to control and potentially unfair. The discussion focuses on the cultural forces that may drive or facilitate populist attitudes across context and time.

Culture and attitudes towards contraception of women in subsistence markets: the role of values and social axioms

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Divaries Cosmas Jaravaza ◽  
Fanny Saruchera
Keyword(s):  
Rural Women ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Developing Economy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
Fate Control ◽  
Contraception Use ◽  
Social Cynicism ◽  
Subsistence Markets

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of culture on attitudes to contraception by rural-based women in a developing economy. Design/methodology/approach Based on data collected from 395 rural women in Eastern Zimbabwe, this study examines the hypothesized relationships between values (resultant conservation, resultant self-enhancement), social axioms (reward for application, social cynicism, religiosity, social complexity, fate control and Ubuntu) and contraceptive attitudes, considering the moderating effects of age and education. Findings Using covariance-based Structural Equation Modelling and Multi-Group Analysis, this study found that resultant self-enhancement, fate control, the reward for application and religiosity significantly relate to attitudes to contraception whilst resultant conservation, social complexity, Ubuntu and social cynicism, did not produce significant correlations. Age and education moderate the significant relationships. Research limitations/implications The study's findings suggest that contraception social marketers, non-governmental organizations and health practitioners should develop marketing strategies to neutralize the negative impact of these beliefs held by rural contraceptive consumers to increase contraceptive awareness and uptake in such subsistence markets. In addition, this study provides empirical evidence on the role of Ubuntu as a new culture construct in African markets. Originality/value Despite being limited to a single developing economy, this paper extends prior research on consumer culture and attitudes on contraception use by exploring the role of values and social axioms, an imperative issue for rural women health and general subsistence market well-being.

Combining social axioms with values in predicting social behaviours

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Harris Bond ◽  
Kwok Leung ◽  
Al Au ◽  
Kwok‐Kit Tong ◽  
Zoë Chemonges‐Nielson
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Wishful Thinking ◽  
Hierarchical Regression ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Cynicism ◽  
And Coping

Recently, Leung et al. (2002) have identified a pan‐cultural set of five dimensions tapping beliefs about the world in which each individual functions. These general axioms may be conceptualized as individual assessments of the social context constraining one's behavioural choices. As such, we hypothesize that these beliefs about the world may be combined with measures of motivation to predict an individual's actions. To test this model, the present research examined the usefulness of these social axioms as predictors of behavioural tendencies in conjunction with four comprehensive dimensions of values (Schwartz, 1992). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that social axioms added moderate predictive power over and above that provided by values to vocational choices, methods of conflict resolution, and coping styles. Specifically, reward for application was related to preference for conventional jobs and accommodation in conflict resolution; religiosity was related to accommodation and to competition in conflict resolution; social cynicism was related negatively to collaboration and to compromise in conflict resolution, and positively to wishful thinking in coping; fate control was related positively to wishful thinking and distancing in coping; and social complexity was related to compromise and to collaboration in conflict resolution, and to problem‐solving as a coping strategy. It thus seems as if measures of respondents' beliefs about the external, social world supplement measures of their internal motivations to achieve various goals. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Life Regrets and Death Attitudes in College Students

2005 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Tomer ◽  
Grafton Eliason
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Death Anxiety ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comprehensive Model ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Death Attitudes ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Life Regrets ◽  
Death Acceptance

The relationship between death attitudes and life regret was examined in college students. Two types of regret, past-related regret and future-related regret, were defined and measured. The results confirmed the hypothesis, based on a comprehensive model of death anxiety, that both types of regret independently predict fear and avoidance of death. Other background and self variables may affect death anxiety, usually indirectly, by influencing the two types of regret. Death acceptance, on the other hand, was found to be influenced directly by intrinsic religious motivation and indirectly by other background and self variables.

scholarly journals Social axioms and coping strategies: the case of a Greek sample

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Aikaterini Gari ◽  
Penny Panagiotopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Wishful Thinking ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
Fate Control ◽  
Social Cynicism

Social axioms are individual assessments of psychological, social, material and spiritual reality expressed as generalized beliefs or assertions about the relationship between two entities or concepts. This study explores how social axioms are associated with coping styles in a Greek sample composed of students and adults. Previous studies of how social axioms are related to coping styles showed that Social Complexity predicted the coping style of problem solving, Fate Control predicted the strategies of distancing, and Social Cynicism predicted the wishful thinking coping processes. In the present study, the 82 item questionnaire version of the Social Axioms Survey (SAS) was employed, along with the Folkman and Lazarus questionnaire of coping styles adapted in the Greek language. Both questionnaires were administered to a sample of 192 individuals, of 48 men and 144 women, among whom 108 were adults and 84 were university students. The sample was composed by two age groups: young adults-students of age 18-30 years (43.8%) and adults of age 31-59 years (56.3%). The results showed that Social Cynicism was not correlated in any way withcoping strategies; however, Social Complexity was significantly associated with problem solving strategies, and Fate control was also associated with wishful thinking and distancing coping strategies.

scholarly journals Social Axioms of Young and Old People in India: A Survey Study

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ankita Singh ◽  
Shabana Bano
Keyword(s):  
Social Complexity ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Old People ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
Fate Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Social Cynicism

Social axioms play a crucial role in the individual’s belief and value systems. The major functions of axioms are to enhance the survival and functioning of people in their social environment. Leung and Bond (2004) proposed five dimensions of social axioms as social cynicism, social complexity, reward for application, fate control and religiosity. The present study was designed to examine the social axioms of younger and older people. The study was conducted with 86 participants (N=51 young and N=35 old) age ranged 20-30 and 50-60 years. They were sampled from various areas of Varanasi City. The social axioms survey (Leung, Bond, Carrasquel, Munoz, Hernandez, Murikami, Yamagushi, Biebrauer&Singelis, 2002) was administered to examine the participants. Result showed that older participants significantly higher on social cynicism, reward for application and religiosity than younger participants. With respect to social complexity and fate control, no significant difference was found. The findings suggest that social axioms are important to understand an individual’s behaviour in a given society.

The death anxiety in the shadow of perceived stress: a danger facing hospitalized patients with COVID-19 (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Darban
Keyword(s):  
Perceived Stress ◽  
Death Anxiety ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Hospitalized Patients ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Public Crisis ◽  
Eastern Iran ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

UNSTRUCTURED COVID-19 has become a public crisis in the world. This study aimed to determine the relationship between perceived stress and death anxiety in COVID-19 hospitalized patients. Participants consist of 200 COVID-19 patients admitted to a hospital in eastern Iran selected by convenience sample and an online survey. The results showed a significant direct relationship between perceived stress and death anxiety in patients (p <0.05). In addition, perceived stress predicted death anxiety.

Casting Shadows at Chesney Wold: Empty-House-Time and Realism in the British Novel

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-192
Author(s):  
Laura Strout
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
British Novel ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Affective Dimensions

Abstract What insights into literary realism can be found by dwelling in the empty rooms and abandoned spaces of Bleak House, a novel more often read for its representation of overcrowded environments? Traveling between and imaginatively inhabiting empty houses of Charles Dickens's and Virginia Woolf's construction, this article proposes empty-house-time as a distinctive narrative chronotope, one that nineteenth- and twentieth-century British writers use to investigate the processes of realist fiction, especially its affective dimensions. Taking the character-less built environment as a figure for the novel form, the article shows that the chromatic present that characterizes narratives of spaces like Chesney Wold when the Dedlocks are absent throws into flux boundaries between the fictional and the real, the reader and the world of the text, and different modes of imagining. It opens up continuums along which strategies of realist characterization and world-building are dramatized and interrogated. Most powerfully, empty-house-time reveals how affects associated with imagining the world going on without you shape encounters with fiction. Identifying the vital, ongoing existence of unoccupied rooms in Dickens's writing can in turn revitalize studies of the relationship between Victorian and modernist novels and theories of realism. This article concludes by turning to the Ramsays’ abandoned coastal home in To the Lighthouse, in which Woolf, like Dickens, links an interrogation of realist fictionality to a historically specific reimagining of the household.

Social Axioms and Implicit Attitudes About People with Disabilities

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Ma ◽  
Shuang Chen ◽  
Mingjie Zhou ◽  
Jianxin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Social Axioms ◽  
Fate Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

We investigated the relationship between social axioms and implicit attitudes toward people with disabilities. Participants were 101 undergraduate students (male = 30, female = 71) from a university in Beijing. Social axioms were assessed using the Social Axioms Survey (Leung et al., 2002) and implicit attitudes were measured using the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Data analysis showed that the social axiom dimension of fate control was negatively related to implicit attitudes toward people with disabilities. None of the other 4 social axiom dimensions was found to be correlated with implicit attitudes.

Associations Between Death Fascination, Death Anxiety and Religion among Polish College Students

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherman A. Lee ◽  
Jarosław P. Piotrowski ◽  
Joanna Różycka ◽  
Magdalena A. Żemojtel-Piotrowska
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Death Anxiety ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Terror Management Theory ◽  
Terror Management ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Death Attitudes ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Religious Engagement ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Previous research examining the relationship between religion and attitudes about death have yielded mixed results due to over-simplified conceptualizations of constructs, lack of theory, and an over-reliance on Western samples. To overcome these issues, the present study examined the relationship between three types of religious orientation and two types of death attitudes among a sample of 532 college students in Poland. The results demonstrated unique relations between religion and death attitudes, as well emphasized the importance of considering religious engagement as a moderating variable. Although the results were generally consistent with Terror Management Theory, other theoretical perspectives were considered as well.

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