Death Anxiety and its Relationship with Sensory Processing Sensitivity: A Quantitative Study using Online Survey Methodology

Personality factors have been shown to be associated with death anxiety, but sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), has yet to be examined in this context. Given the ubiquity of death-related media, it is proposed that SPS predisposes individuals to death anxiety in response to daily, death-related stimuli. As death and dying are ranked as prevalent stressors for caregivers, this study compared caregivers and non-caregivers in examining whether SPS and its subscales, low sensory threshold, ease of excitation and aesthetic sensitivity, are differentially associated with death anxiety across them. In the overall sample and in caregivers, SPS, low sensory threshold and excitation predicted death anxiety, after controlling for related variables. Only ease of excitation predicted death anxiety in non-caregivers. Future research may expand on these findings, by qualitatively examining the experience of death anxiety for those high in SPS, and in experimentally testing mechanisms linking SPS, and its subscales, with death anxiety.