ABSTRACT
A review of the literature on death anxiety reveals the need for the formulation of a comprehensive, operational, and testable model that will relate death anxiety to possible determinants. Such a model can serve several purposes. From an empirical point of view, a comprehensive model has the potential of explaining some of the inconsistent or paradoxical findings regarding death anxiety. It is important to provide a “working definition” of death anxiety before proceeding to the task of formulating the model. The concept of death anxiety as used here is that of a negative emotional reaction provoked by the anticipation of a state in which the self does not exist. According to the proposed model, there are three direct determinants of death anxiety: past-related regret, future-related regret, and meaningfulness of death. Death acceptance is traditionally considered an attribute of wisdom.
