Behaviour in life can be affected by how you think about death

A new study has concluded that there is a high chance that depending on how you think about death will actually affect how you act in your life.

Picture by HeatherHeatherHeather - Flickr

Higher chances of donating blood

The study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, had the participants think about death in one of two ways. Either in an abstract sense or in a personal sense. The studies showed that the people that were told to think about death on a personal level were more likely to donate blood due to showing concern for society.

The study was simple, some participants were asked questions that were moderately abstract, such as what would happen to them if they died, and the other participants were asked what would happen if they died in an apartment fire and how their family and friends would deal with that.

After that they were presented with one of two pamphlets which either said that blood donations were at a record high or a record low. The people that were asked the abstract questions were more likely to take a pamphlet if they read the one about donations being at a record low but were not so concerned if they read the one about donations being at a record high.

The people that thought about death in a personal manner were however more likely to take a pamphlet regardless if they got the one about donations being high or low. In other words, they were spurred to donate blood regardless of the situation presented to them.

Reflections

So what we have established from this is that it might actually be better to think about death in a more personal manner, since it spurs us to do things that benefit others, rather than thinking about it in abstract terms which might actually scare us into not acting at all. Any thoughts about this?