CULTURAL VALUES AND ATTITUDESTOWARD DEATH

Alan Howard, Ph.D. and Robert A. Scou, Ph.D.

Attitudes toward death, like so manyother aspects of a people's "world-view,"are strongly influenced by dominant cul­tural themes. In this paper, we proposeto analyze some of the cultural valuesthat appear to affect American attitudestoward death, and to explore their so­cial consequences. We shall also contrastAmerican patterns with those of a Poly­nesian people, the Rotumans, amongwhom one of the authors has recentlycompleted twenty-one months of fieldwork.1

In comparison with other attitudessuch as prejudice, attitudes towarddeath have received little attention fromsocial scientists in this country; yet fewattitudes are more central to humanmotivation. Any satisfactory compre­hension of human behavior requires aknowledge of the significance that peo­ple attribute to being alive; and tounderstand this requires a knowledgeof their attitudes toward death. Thepaucity of systematic studies in thisarea reflects the morbidity with whichthe subject is regarded in our society.Nevertheless, a few highly significantstudies have been made which shouldstimulate further research.

Previous studies have reported thatthe predominant attitude toward deathin American society is one of dread.Such a disposition has been found toprevail in the population as a whole,2and in such subgroups as older persons,3college students,4 adolescents,5 andphysicians.6 But perhaps the mostthoroughly studied group has beenyoung children. Various studies havedealt with children's feelings aboutdeath,7 how they cope with the ideaof death intellectually,8 the theories

they employ to explain it,9 the impactof their first experience of the deathof another,10 and the effects of theirown impending death upon their fan­tasies. ll It should be noted in passingthat this focus upon children's attitudesis not entirely rooted in their theoreticalrelevance, nor does it seem to stemsolely from the intellectual curiosity ofthe investigators. Perhaps a more im­portant factor is the ease with whichthe investigators are able to avoid iden­tification with young subjects, therebyreducing the danger of their own self­involvement with the fact of death.Furthermore, children are less apt tocommunicate a sense of morbidity, andso are less threatening subjects thanadults.

Additional studies have dealt withvarious other aspects of death. Amongthese are studies of bereavement andits social impact,12 and of the sociolo­gical and cultural significance of funeralrites.13 Anthropologists have contributedsome special studies on attitudes towarddeath in other cultures,14 while moststandard ethnographies describe beliefsand rituals concerning death.

These studies provide an excellentbasis for attempting to comprehendand explain the predominance in oursociety of a fearful attitude towarddeath. Some noteworthy progress hasalready been made toward illuminatingthe psychodynamics involved,15 but asyet the sociocultural determinants havegotten little attention. What little spec­ulation there has been on those de­termnants has come either from generalessayists,16 or from writers on philoso­phy,17 art,18 and literature.19 The pur­pose of the present paper is to sys-

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tematically explore some of the linksbetween dominant cultural themes andattitudes toward death, with a viewtoward stimulating further research.

There is a distinction between atti­tudes toward death and attitudes to­ward dying. Death is a state or condi­tion into which every organism passes.It refers to the complete cessation ofall vital functions of the organism.Dying, on the other hand, is a process,the process of life drawing to a close.Hence, dying usually involves the pos­sibility of avoidance or delay, whereasdeath is final and inevitable.

The fear of dying seems to be uni­versal. Philosophers and students ofhuman behavior have long pointed outthat self-preservation is a fundamentalhuman motive, and some have evensuggested that it is the most basic of allhuman motives. Every society regardshuman life as precious and takes pre­cautions to preserve it. From time totime, under very special circumstances,other values may supersede the valueof life itself-clan and kindred, honor,patriotism, self-glorification, etc.-thenature of these values varying from so­ciety to society. But in every society,individuals willingly give their lives onlyunder extreme conditions. Nowhereis dying taken lightly, and to die fornothing is everywhere regarded as agreat misfortune.

The fear of death, however, is notuniversal. Persons may also regard thestate of death with acquiescence,friendly anticipation, or even fanaticalhope. This fact is well documented inthe studies of Bromberg and Schilder,who note that "the fear of actuallydying is apparently uppermost. It seemsthat the act of dying more than beingdead or death completely overrides thenotion that the individual is removedfrom the land of the living. Most ofthe subjects stress the dislike of thedying process."20 As Wahl notes, "deathis itself not only a state, but a complexsymbol, the significance of which willvary from one person to another and

from one culture to another, and isalso profoundly dependent upon thenature of the vicissitudes of the develop­mental process."21 It is the culturalcontext of this developmental processthat we shall explore here.

Three aspects of death are of specialrelevance to our discussion. First, deathmay be conceived of as a defeat of manby nature. Men everywhere have attheir disposal a variety of cultural tech­niques-notably medicine, magic, andprayer-with which to challenge dying.But despite all men's efforts, death isthe ultimate victor.

Second, death results in separation.Foremost is the physical separation ofthe deceased from friends and relatives,and from society in general; but alsoimplied is a total cessation of socialinteraction between the deceased andhis survivors. The degree to which thisseparation is dramatized differs fromsociety to society, but it is usually ex­pressed in the specific funeral custom.22At one extreme are those societies whichsanction the preservation of corpses orof relics from them, or which keep thecorpse within the village and allow itto deteriorate slowly. Under such cir­cumstances, the drama of separation ismitigated. At the other extreme arethose societies in which corpses are de­stroyed with the greatest possible haste;in these societies, the physical separa­tion, at least, is dramatic and abrupt.Cultural beliefs regarding the fate ofsouls may also affect the rapidity withwhich separation is experienced. Wheretradition holds that the souls of the deadremain socially active for a period oftime following death, one would expectseparation to be experienced lessabruptly than where souls are believedto depart directly from the social sphere,or not to exist at all.

Third, death is a state of inactivity.It is true, of course, that most peopleprofess to believe in a life after death­a state in which the soul is active. Yetthe very way in which this is usuallystated-life after death-merely empha-

sizes the association of life with activityand death with inactivity. Regardlessof beliefs concerning the soul, the qui­escence of the physical organism afterdeath is readily apparent and dramatizesthe association of death with inactivity.

It is our basic thesis that the dreadwith which death is regarded in Ameli­can culture can in part be explained asthe result of a conflict between the as­pects of death discussed above andbasic American values.

AMERICAN VALUES AND ATTITUDES

TOWARD DEATH

At the core of the American valuesystem is the belief that man can masternature, a belief which has motivatedthe phenomenal technological progressthat we now enjoy. The belief itself,however, has been nurtured by the factthat man has been able to gain a greatercontrol over his environment than previ­ous generations thought possible. Tech­nological progress has enabled man tosolve problems that previously had beenregarded as unchangeable facts of life.Man has moved into an age in whichit is not only hoped, but accepted ascertainty, that with enough money,knowledge, and hours of work, it ispossible to resolve any problem, sur­mount any obstacle, or change any partof nature.

One result of these beliefs is thatmost Americans do not really acceptdeath as inevitable; they tend to feelinvulnerable. As Wahl has noted, thesebeliefs are "puissant enough to enablethe majority of mankind to remain rela­tively untroubled in the face of thevast array of factors which should con­vince them that death is the inevitableend of all men 'even themselves.' "23Thus our cultural conditioning makesus feel shocked at the realization ofdeath's finality. In its presence we areforced to re-evaluate our belief system.In the words of Jung, "the question ofthe meaning and worth of life never be-

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comes more urgent or more agonizingthan when we see the final breath leavea body which a moment before was liv­ing."24 In sum, death may be conceivedof as a thwarting of man's struggle forultimate supremacy; it hence constitutesa serious threat to his sense of masteryover nature. As such, it is a source ofanxiety and fear.

In America, separation and isolationare also associated with death. To someextent, this is a consequence of twofeatures of our sociocultural system.First, our modal funeral custom involvesinterment of the corpse in a closed box,which is hastily transported to the out­skirts of a town or city and placed ina hole in the ground. The process ofcremation is hardly a less dramatic formof separation. Second, since the networkof interpersonal relations with signili­cant others tends to be narrowly con­fined in our culture, death usually in­volves a certain measure of socialisolation for the bereaved. To fullyunderstand this association of deathwith social isolation, it is necessary toprobe further into the signilicance ofsocial isolation in America. As a generalrule, the threat of social isolation gen­erates considerable anxiety for Ameri­cans. This is implied in our system ofsocial control, in which social isolationis second only to death in severity ofpunishment. Perhaps the most dramaticexample of its effectiveness can be seenfrom its impact on prisoners of war.25

There are several reasons why sep­aration is threatening to persons in oursociety. One is that most individualslive within a tight security circle, relyingupon only a few people for emotionalgratilication. This tends to produce in­tense, rather than diffuse affective rela­tionships, rendering separation fromonly a few people a potentially criticalemotional experience. The possibility offinding adequate substitutes for signili­cant others is remote. As a consequence,the whole self-image of an individual isunder maximum risk when he is facedwith separation. A factor of even greater