Attitudes towards Death:Age, Regional and Gender Differences
The paper presents research data on attitudes towards death among intellectuals students and academic staff of arts and humanities universities of Moscow, Yerevan and Rome, i.e. cultural centers where Christian confessions have traditionally been predominant. The degree of optimism/pessimism in the subjects' attitudes towards death was assessed with an approved scale, the full version of which is reproduced in the paper. Regional differences in the subjects' attitudes towards death can be interpreted not only in terms of cultural-historical traditions, but also in terms of modern social economical settings of different regions. Age (youth/maturity) and gender differences are closely related to the regional ones. In Rome, the level of optimistic attitudes increases with age, while in the post-Soviet countries it tends to decrease and become ambivalent in late adulthood, as it is in Moscow and Yerevan. At the same time, in Rome high levels of optimistic attitudes towards death are typical both for men and women, whereas in Moscow and in Yerevan ambivalent attitudes are mostly common for men and for women respectively.