Memento Mori: The development and validation of the Death Reflection Scale

Abstract

Summary Despite its potential for advancing organizational behavior (OB) research, the topic of death awareness has been vastly understudied. Moreover, research on death awareness has predominantly focused on the anxiety‐provoking aspect of death‐related cognitions, thus overlooking the positive aspect of death awareness, death reflection. This gap is exacerbated by the lack of a valid research instrument to measure death reflection. To address this issue, we offer a systematic conceptualization of death reflection, develop the Death Reflection Scale, and assess its psychometric properties across four studies. Further, using a sample of 268 firefighters, we examine whether death reflection buffers the detrimental impact of mortality cues at work on employee well‐being and safety performance. Results provide strong support for the psychometric properties of the Death Reflection Scale. Further, moderation analysis indicates death reflection weakens the negative effect of mortality cues on firefighters' safety performance. Overall, these findings suggest the newly developed Death Reflection Scale will prove useful in future research on death‐related cognitions.

The consequences of (not) seeing eye‐to‐eye about the past: The role of supervisor–team fit in past temporal focus for supervisors' leadership behavior

“…Shipp and colleagues have introduced the notion that an individual's temporal focus may change as a result of critical events and experiences. A supervisor who faces a traumatic work event (e.g., Yuan et al, ) or a team experiencing repeated performance setbacks (e.g., Rauter, Weiss, & Hoegl, ), for example, may subsequently alter their temporal focus. Examining such events in both field and laboratory settings may help to better comprehend the potentially dynamic nature of supervisor–team past temporal focus incongruence and its leadership consequences.…”

Death anxiety, death reflection and interpersonal communication as predictors of social distance towards people infected with COVID 19

“…We extend existing research in several ways. First, we build on previous research on the interplay between death anxiety and death reflection (Yuan et al, 2019 ) and show that death reflection (as a trait) impacts on the strength of the association between death anxiety (as a trait) and COVID-19 anxiety and negative mood (as emotional states). Second, we test the interplay between the use of humoristic and general COVID-19 communication on negative emotionality in relation to COVID-19 and pinpoint the role of using humor in communication as an anxiety buffer.…”

“…Death anxiety is a stable individual propensity to experience negative emotions stemming from one’s existential concerns related to mortality (Sliter et al, 2014 ). Death reflection is a stable individual tendency to engage in “deliberate cognitive processing of mortality that focuses on the positive aspects of death, which encompasses concrete behavioral intentions to realize such positive aspects” (Yuan et al, 2019 , p. 419). As opposed to death anxiety that focuses on negative emotions triggered by mortality cues, death reflection describes the cognitive attempts to give higher order meaning to death, put life in context and live meaningfully.…”

“…As opposed to death anxiety that focuses on negative emotions triggered by mortality cues, death reflection describes the cognitive attempts to give higher order meaning to death, put life in context and live meaningfully. We build on the idea that stable personality traits reflect accumulated state-like behavioral tendencies, emotional experiences and evaluative tendencies (Fleeson, 2001 ) to argue that death anxiety reflects a systematic tendency to experience negative emotionality related to death-threatening nature of stressors in the environment, while death reflection reveals systematic cognitive efforts of putting death-threatening stressors in context and ultimately reduce the anguish of death (Yuan et al, 2019 ). In line with this conceptualization, the COVID-19 pandemic brings forth mortality cues that are more likely to trigger negative emotionality and state-like anxiety for those scoring high rather than low in death anxiety as well as for those scoring low rather than high in death reflection as individual differences.…”

“…Research using direct and indirect emotional measures in relation to death priming show that death anxiety is an interpersonal tendency of negative emotional processing concerning death-related cues (Pettigrew & Dawson, 1979 ). Novel insights into the cognitive and emotional correlates of mortality salience recognize the role of death reflection, resulting from an analytical rather than emotional processing of death-related thoughts (Yuan et al, 2019 ). If death anxiety is associated with fear and negative emotionality, death reflection focuses on rationalization and analytic cognitions that position mortality in relation to meaningful life experiences.…”