A sociocultural analysis of death anxiety among older Japanese urbanites in a citizens' movement

By examining the experiences of death anxiety and attitudes toward personal deaths among members of a citizens' movement, the Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS), this study considers the applicability of the view that culture and high self-esteem serve as defenses against death anxiety in Japan's changing society. The GFPS promotes the scattering of ashes over the conventional interment of cremated remains in a family grave. GFPS members often lack descendants to care for a family grave, the neglect of which is thought to endanger the deceased's peaceful rest. By returning the dead to nature through ash scattering, the GFPS provides an alternative strategy of managing its members' posthumous well-being. GFPS members often report that their choice of ash scattering has reduced their anxiety about their personal deaths and improved the quality of their lives. Based upon these findings, this study offers some suggestions for increasing cultural sensitivities of test instruments commonly used to examine death anxiety among older persons for use in a Japanese context.     

End of life care and reactions to death in African-American and white family caregivers of relatives with Alzheimer's disease

Family caregivers for relatives with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) often experience significant stress-related problems in mental and physical health. Patients with AD often survive for protracted periods of time, placing an extensive burden of care on the caregiver prior to the patient's death. The present study addresses ethnic differences in the experience of AD caregivers around the time of their loved one's death, including life-sustaining treatment decisions and reactions to death. The results showed that, in our sample, more patients died in their homes than has been reported for deaths in the United States. African-American and White caregivers differed substantially in their reports of end of life care and subjective reactions to the death. Compared with White caregivers, African-American caregivers were less likely to make a decision to withhold treatment at the time of death, less likely to have their relative die in a nursing home, and reported less acceptance of the relative's death and greater perceived loss. Results suggest that death after AD caregiving deserves further study, and that ethnic differences in end of life care and bereavement may be of particular importance.     

Personifications of personal and typical death as related to death attitudes

The present article examined differences in personifications of personal and typical death as a function of attitudes about death. Ninety-eight students enrolled in psychology classes were randomly assigned to personify death as a character in a movie depicting either their own deathbed scene or the deathbed scene of the typical person prior to completing the Death Attitude Profile-Revised. The results supported the conceptual distinction between attitudes about personal death and death in general. Participants in the personal death condition personified death more frequently as a gentle-comforting image and less frequently as a cold-remote image than did participants in the typical death condition. The results also further validated the relation between personifications of death and death attitudes. Across both conditions, participants who selected the grim-terrifying image reported more fear of death and death avoidance; whereas, participants who selected the cold-remote or robot-like images reported more neutral acceptance.     

Acceptance of automation manufacturing technology in China: an examination of perceived norm and organizational efficacy

Abstract

With a shift to more automation technology, social acceptance of technology plays an important role in the manufacturing sector. To what extent this occurs, and affects the adoption of technology, has been less researched, but is important in deciding how such technology is introduced, and the nature of the shift from labour-intensive manufacturing to automation. This research applies the revised technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine the impact of social and individual antecedents on the acceptance of automation manufacturing technology. Survey data are collected from 258 Chinese manufacturers. Results suggest that perceived norms significantly affect organizational intention to use automation manufacturing technology both directly and via perceived usefulness; organizational efficacy explains the intention to use via mediating effect of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. This research is one of the first extending and applying TAM from individuals to organizations.     

The Influence of Trust and Perceptions of Risks and Benefits on the Acceptance of Gene Technology

A causal model explaining acceptance of gene technology was tested. It was hypothesized that trust in institutions using gene technology or using modified products has a positive impact on perceived benefit and a negative influence on perceived risk of this technology. Furthermore, perceived benefit and perceived risk determine acceptance of biotechnology. In other words, trust has an indirect influence on the acceptance of the technology. The postulated model was tested using structural equation modeling procedures and data from a random quota sample of 1001 Swiss citizens between 18 and 74 years old. Results indicated that the proposed model fits the data very well. The same causal model explains females' and males' acceptance of gene technology. Gender differences were found for the latent variables trust, perceived benefit, and acceptance of gene technology. Females indicated more trust, perceived less benefit, and demonstrated less acceptance than did males. No significant difference was observed for perceived risk. The implications of the results are discussed.     

Researching "good death" in a Hong Kong palliative care program: a clinical data-mining study

This study operationalizes and assesses the percentage of "good deaths" achieved among Chinese cancer patients in a palliative care program, the profile of these patients, the relationship between patients with a good death and psychosocial factors, and the differences in background factors, and physical and psychosocial conditions between patients who experienced a good death and those who did not. Clinical data mining was the research method used. Records of deceased cancer patients between 2003 and 2005 in a palliative care unit were the sole data source. Good death was operationally defined as the patient's record indicating no pain (physical) or anxiety (psychological), and having open and honest communication with family (social) in the final assessment by the Support Team Assessment Schedule (STAS) just before death. Using these criteria, about one-fifth of patients (21.5%; 137 out of 638) experienced a good death. Those with a good death were significantly older and were in palliative care longer. Their records also indicated lower levels of constipation, insomnia, oral discomfort, and family anxiety at their first and at their final STAS assessments. Good death was positively associated with recorded indicators of fullness in life, caregivers' acceptance and support, and negatively with reported feelings of upset about changes in the course of their illness. The results heighten awareness among social workers and other healthcare professionals about the value of good death in patients in palliative care. This empirically-based awareness can foster professionals' ability to set intervention objectives to help patients in palliative care achieve this universally accepted goal.     

Mitigation and Benefits Measures as Policy Tools for Siting Potentially Hazardous Facilities: Determinants of Effectiveness and Appropriateness

How do mitigation and benefits measures affect public acceptance for siting different kinds of potentially hazardous facilities? What kinds of benefits measures are seen as most (or least) appropriate for different kinds of facilities? This study used a nationwide telephone survey consisting of 1,234 interviews with randomly selected respondents to test for the effects of packages of safety and benefits measures for siting a landfill, prison, incinerator and nuclear waste repository. The experimental design used in the survey permits analysis of the fractions of respondents who are willing to change their initial levels of acceptance (or opposition) when presented with a sequence of the safety and benefit measures. The measures vary significantly in their impact on levels of acceptance for the facilities, and some measures that would at face value appear to reassure residents of facility safety turn out to lack credibility and therefore diminish facility acceptance. Ordering of the benefits versus safety measures significantly affects changes in acceptance in surprising ways. The perceived appropriateness of different kinds of benefits measures varies systematically by the type of facility under consideration. It appears that successful benefits packages will directly address the underlying dimensions of concern caused by the facility. These findings point to the importance of further research on “commensurable” benefits measures.     

Appraisal of Individual Radiation Risk in the Context of Probabilistic Exposures

There exists a growing desire to base safety criteria in different fields on the same principles. The current approach by the international Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to control radiation exposure touches many aspects such as social, psychological, or economic factors that are important for such principles. This paper attempts to further explore possible ways of defining a common basis for dealing with radiation risks and other safety problems. Specifically, it introduces the following issues: (1) different types of risk are judged differently. To account for this, the concept of risk categories is introduced. (2) The dimension of time may play an important role. There is a difference between an immediate death and a death occurring 20 years after exposure to radiation. Effects such as reduced quality of life after exposure and reduction of lifetime expectancy are discussed. The paper suggests to introduce an individual risk equivalent which allows to compare risks as defined in various fields. Furthermore, it suggests the use of risk acceptance criteria which depend on the different categories of risk.     

Die Akzeptanz der elektronischen Gesundheitskarte in Deutschland

Against the background of the increasing importance of eHealth, this contribution concentrates on the issue of acceptance regarding the introduction of the electronic health card (English for elektronische Gesundheitskarte, hereinafter referred to as eHC) on the part of the service providing health institutions. After presenting the general issue, the relevance of the subject is described and the eHC is defined. Then the eHC is classified in terms of terminology and afterwards the current state of research of investigations regarding acceptance in the field of eHC is presented and evaluated. Based on both the technology acceptance model and the relevant literature, the important factors influencing the attitude towards and the eventual use of the eHC are conceptualized and integrated in an investigation model. The empirical investigation took place throughout Germany within the scope of an online survey of the health care providers. All in all, 502 questionnaires were reflected in the evaluation of the willingness of acceptance. The empirical results show that regarding the perceived usefulness the performance of the system and a well balanced cost-/benefit-ratio lead to an increasing acceptance of the eHC. Being integrated in the decision process, however, is not relevant for the German physicians. Within the context of the perceived ease of use the compatibility of the system is much less relevant than the controllability or the general usability.     

Detecting nuclear materials smuggling: performance evaluation of container inspection policies

In recent years, the United States, along with many other countries, has significantly increased its detection and defense mechanisms against terrorist attacks. A potential attack with a nuclear weapon, using nuclear materials smuggled into the country, has been identified as a particularly grave threat. The system for detecting illicit nuclear materials that is currently in place at U.S. ports of entry relies heavily on passive radiation detectors and a risk-scoring approach using the automated targeting system (ATS). In this article we analyze this existing inspection system and demonstrate its performance for several smuggling scenarios. We provide evidence that the current inspection system is inherently incapable of reliably detecting sophisticated smuggling attempts that use small quantities of well-shielded nuclear material. To counter the weaknesses of the current ATS-based inspection system, we propose two new inspection systems: the hardness control system (HCS) and the hybrid inspection system (HYB). The HCS uses radiography information to classify incoming containers based on their cargo content into "hard" or "soft" containers, which then go through different inspection treatment. The HYB combines the radiography information with the intelligence information from the ATS. We compare and contrast the relative performance of these two new inspection systems with the existing ATS-based system. Our studies indicate that the HCS and HYB policies outperform the ATS-based policy for a wide range of realistic smuggling scenarios. We also examine the impact of changes in adversary behavior on the new inspection systems and find that they effectively preclude strategic gaming behavior of the adversary.     

The More Who Die,the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts

Considerable amount of laboratory and survey‐based research finds that people show disproportional compassionate and affective response to the scope of human mortality risk. According to research on “psychic numbing,” it is often the case that the more who die, the less we care. In the present article, we examine the extent of this phenomenon in verbal behavior, using large corpora of natural language to quantify the affective reactions to loss of life. We analyze valence, arousal, and specific emotional content of over 100,000 mentions of death in news articles and social media posts, and find that language shows an increase in valence (i.e., decreased negative affect) and a decrease in arousal when describing mortality of larger numbers of people. These patterns are most clearly reflected in specific emotions of joy and (in a reverse fashion) of fear and anger. Our results showcase a novel methodology for studying affective decision making, and highlight the robustness and real‐world relevance of psychic numbing. They also offer new insights regarding the psychological underpinnings of psychic numbing, as well as possible interventions for reducing psychic numbing and overcoming social and psychological barriers to action in the face of the world's most serious threats.     

INTRODUCING OR/MS INTO ORGANIZATIONS: NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF SELECTED INDIAN EXPERIENCE*

There is considerable evidence that firms and institutions that have adopted and utilized operations research and related management sciences (OR/MS) experience severe internal disruptions and changes as the new technology is introduced. In some cases the reactions have been adverse enough to result in temporary rejection of the technology and a period of three to five years has been necessary for reintroduction of OR/MS. Such lags represent lost opportunities with attendant costs that firms and institutions can ill afford. There is obvious need to manage the introduction of OR/MS into organizations to minimize the inevitable resistances to change and to expedite institutional acceptance and practice. This paper presents a normative framework for this purpose based on four case studies of Indian implementation experience. The selected firms, which represent different sectors of industry, adopted different strategies for introduction and diffusion of OR/MS. The authors have noted several points of similarity between the Indian experience and the experience of U.S. organizations which indicate a fair measure of general validity for the proposed normative framework.     

Perception and Acceptance of Technological and Environmental Risks: Why Are Poor Countries Less Concerned?

The research has been aimed at answering two questions: (1) What factors impact perception and acceptance of technological and environmental hazards? (2) Why are rich societies involved more in protecting their environment and health than poor societies? Data has been collected from representative samples of two countries—Poland and Sweden. The results indicate that (1) contrary to earlier findings, the inverse relations between perceived benefits and dangers of hazards has not been observed, (2) acceptance of a risk has been mostly influenced by perceived benefits, (3) rejection of a risk has been mostly influenced by its perceived harmful consequences. Concerning the second question, it has been found that: (1) perceived hazard's danger and benefit is not the only factor that impacts its acceptance, and (2) a broader economic context can impact acceptance (tolerance) of hazards. It has been found that being aware of high dangers and not very high benefits of hazardous activities, Poles still have accepted them. Thus, Poles seem to follow an old proverb: “When one does not have what one likes, one has to like what one has.”     

Attenuating Initial Beliefs: Increasing the Acceptance of Anthropogenic Climate Change Information by Reflecting on Values

Anthropogenic climate change information tends to be interpreted against the backdrop of initial environmental beliefs, which can lead to some people being resistant toward the information. In this article (N = 88), we examined whether self‐affirmation via reflection on personally important values could attenuate the impact of initial beliefs on the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change evidence. Our findings showed that initial beliefs about the human impact on ecological stability influenced the acceptance of information only among nonaffirmed participants. Self‐affirmed participants who were initially resistant toward the information showed stronger beliefs in the existence of climate change risks and greater acknowledgment that individual efficacy has a role to play in reducing climate change risks than did their nonaffirmed counterparts.     

LYING ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW OR ABOUT WHAT YOU DO?

We compare communication about private information to communication about actions in a one‐shot 2‐person public good game with private information. The informed player, who knows the exact return from contributing and whose contribution is unobserved, can send a message about the return or her contribution. Theoretically, messages can elicit the uninformed player's contribution, and allow the informed player to free‐ride. The exact language used is not expected to matter. Experimentally, however, we find that free‐ride depends on the language: the informed player free‐rides less—and thereby lies less frequently—when she talks about her contribution than when she talks about the return. Further experimental evidence indicates that it is the promise component in messages about the contribution that leads to less free‐ride and less lying.     

McDonaldization, Islamic teachings, and funerary practices in Kuwait

Drawing on George Ritzer's sociological concept of McDonaldization, this article explores the transformation of burial practices in Kuwait. It is argued that traditional, religious, and private ways of dealing with death have been modernized using the fast-food model of McDonald's. This article examines Islamic teachings on burial and how that model has been applied to the traditional Muslim funerary services, including cemetery management, grave excavation, funeral prayers, burial, and condolences, to make them more efficient vis-a-vis more profitable. Based on personal observations and random interviews, the study finds that the state bureaucracy in Kuwait has made burial rituals more efficient, standardized, calculable, and controlled. Furthermore, several associated irrationalities are also considered. Findings suggest that some individuals may not be happy with these changes but there is no popular resistance to McDonaldization of the burial practices, probably due to the authoritarian and welfare nature of the State of Kuwait.     

The Role of Innovation Characteristics and Perceived Voluntariness in the Acceptance of Information Technologies

The often paradoxical relationship between investment in information technology and gains in productivity has recently been attributed to a lack of user acceptance of information technology innovations. Diverse streams of research have attempted to explain and predict user acceptance of new information technologies. A common theme underlying these various research streams is the inclusion of the perceived characteristics of an innovation as key independent variables. Furthermore, prior research has utilized different outcomes to represent user acceptance behavior. In this paper we focus on individual's perceptions about the characteristics of the target technology as explanatory and predictive variables for acceptance behavior, and present an empirical study examining the effects of these perceptions on two frequently used outcomes in the context of the innovation represented by the World Wide Web. The two outcomes examined are initial use of an innovation and intentions to continue such use in the future, that is, to routinize technology use. Two research questions motivated and guided the study. First, are the perceptions that predict initial use the same as those that predict future use intentions? Our results confirm, as hypothesized by prior research, that innovation characteristics do explain acceptance behavior. The results further reveal that the specific characteristics that are relevant for each acceptance outcome are different. The second research question asks if perceived voluntariness plays a role in technology acceptance. Results show that external pressure has an impact on adopters' acceptance behavior. Theoretical and practical implications that follow are presented.     

Heaping in anniversary reaction studies: a cautionary note

Several studies have reported evidence that death is often associated with significant ceremonial events like holidays and birthdays, a phenomenon variously called the "anniversary reaction," "holiday effect," "birthday blues," etc. This article, using data from the social security death index (SSDI), shows how evidence for this phenomenon can arise from an artifact in death records called "death heaping" in which certain dates, usually the 1st or the 15th, are systematically entered for missing data. In this study, each calendar birthday for the year 2003 in the SSDI was paired with either the 14th or 15th calendar day of death. For each pairing, there were more deaths for the 15th than the 14th. A second analysis compared the correspondence between dying on the same day of the month as one's birthday for the first 28 days of the month. A significantly greater number of birth-death combinations occurred for the 1st and 15th day of the month. These results suggest that studies of "anniversary reactions" should conduct preliminary evaluations to consider the possibility that statistically significant relationships do not arise from "death heaping."     

Public Acceptance of Fully Automated Driving: Effects of Social Trust and Risk/Benefit Perceptions

Automated driving (AD) is one of the most significant technical advances in the transportation industry. Its safety, economic, and environmental benefits cannot be realized if it is not used. To explain, predict, and increase its acceptance, we need to understand how people perceive and why they accept or reject AD technology. Drawing upon the trust heuristic, we tested a psychological model to explain three acceptance measures of fully AD (FAD): general acceptance, willingness to pay (WTP), and behavioral intention (BI). This heuristic suggests that social trust can directly affect acceptance or indirectly affect acceptance through perceived benefits and risks. Using a survey (N = 441), we found that social trust retained a direct effect as well as an indirect effect on all FAD acceptance measures. The indirect effect of social trust was more prominent in forming general acceptance; the direct effect of social trust was more prominent in explaining WTP and BI. Compared to perceived risk, perceived benefit was a stronger predictor of all FAD acceptance measures and also a stronger mediator of the trust–acceptance relationship. Predictive ability of the proposed model for the three acceptance measures was confirmed. We discuss the implications of our results for theory and practice.     

Nuclear Plant PRA: How Far Has It Come?

Nearly ten years have passed since the publication in August 1974 of the draft Reactor Safety Study (WASH 1400), the first detailed attempt to apply probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) techniques to estimate the public risks posed by commercial nuclear power plants. Now is an opportune time to look back and see how PRA has fared over these ten years. We will not attempt to pass judgement on how the Reactor Safety Study report itself has withstood the test of time, as that task is best left to others less directly involved in preparing the report. Instead, we will examine advances in the understanding, acceptance, and utilization of PRA techniques, as well as technical advances in PRA methods. Some of the significant insights gained from PRAs will be discussed. Finally, some observations on the future of PRA will be offered.