A cross-sectional survey to investigate relationships between coronavirus anxiety, individual death attitudes, and personal worldview was conducted among 202 German-speaking adults in Central Europe. Results indicated that death anxiety significantly predicts coronavirus anxiety beyond sociodemographic variables. Women reported higher coronavirus anxiety than men. Against expectations, dimensions of personal worldview were hardly related to coronavirus anxiety. In contrast, we found evidence for a curvilinear relationship between religiosity as well as atheism and negative death attitudes. Our study contributes to recent discussions about death anxiety as a transdiagnostic factor in psychopathology and yields important implications for psychosocial support in the current pandemic.

Objective: This study examined predictors of compliance with public health guidelines to curb transmission of COVID-19. Design: Applying an exploratory longitudinal design, participants (N = 431) from Germany and Austria completed surveys in April/ May 2020 (T1) and July/August 2020 (T2). Measures: Three outcome measures operationalised compliance with public health guidelines at T2: self-reported adherence (behavioural), agreement and opposition (attitudinal). At T1, demographics, perceived distress (PHQ-4, crisis of meaning), resources (self-control, meaningfulness), locus of control, conspiracy mentality and social media use were assessed. At T2, situational variables were added (person at risk, infection of close person, fear of infection, COVID-19 stress). Temporal shifts from T1 to T2 were examined as complementary information.Results: An attitude-behaviour gap at T2 was identified, as agreement with and opposition to the guidelines were only modestly correlated with adherence to them. Measures of personal concern (fear of infection, person at risk) were associated with both adherence and positive attitudes towards the measures. COVID-19 stress and conspiracy mentality predicted negative attitudes, but not adherence. Age predicted adherence positively, social media use negatively. Conclusion:The findings support the significance of personal concern for compliance with public health guidelines and suggest a critical impact of social media use and conspiracy mentality.

A randomized controlled trial was carried out to investigate effects of heightened mortality awareness on meaning in life and attitudes toward dying and death. An intervention group (n ¼ 51) completed questionnaires and participated in interventions to increase mortality awareness; a control group (n ¼ 47) only completed the questionnaires. Longitudinal analyses revealed a decrease in the intervention group's fear of dying and an increase in their acceptance of dying, but no effects on attitudes toward death. Changes in meaningfulness were contingent on participants' religiousness. Unexpected cross-sectional results and the study's implications for theory and further empirical work are discussed.

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The present mixed methods study investigated personal meanings of death, i.e., concepts, views, and expectations associated with one’s own death, and explored their relation to worldview. To this end, a sample of 202 young, German-speaking adults completed the Death Statements Test, a new qualitative assessment tool, as well as quantitative measures of religiosity, spirituality, atheism, and agnosticism. Qualitative data was transformed to enable quantitative analyses. Results indicated that the spectrum of personal meanings of death is generally broad and multifaceted. The most prevalent view on death was “death as source of motivation and meaning in life.” The frequencies of emotionally positive and negative death meanings were relatively balanced, while neutral statements dominated. Relationships between participants’ death meanings and worldview dimensions turned out to be small but existent. The Death Statements Test proved to be a valuable and economic assessment tool, eliciting rich qualitative material on personal meanings of death.