Lethal Consumption: An Exploration into the Use of Death Anxiety within Advertising Communications

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of death anxiety within advertising communications. The paper focuses specifically on whether advertising has the discrete capability to instigate death anxiety amongst subjects and how this might manifest and it additionally looks to discover whether a group’s materialistic tendencies can act as a variable in determining their susceptibility to death anxiety invoked by advertising. Before and after projective techniques were utilised and results identified that an increase in death anxiety did occur post stimuli, most pervasively amongst subjects deemed to be highly materialistic. Discomfort and confusion were recognized as initial reactions to death within advertising which could look to act as potential predictive measures of death anxiety and the emergence of five themes that indicated the prevalence of death anxiety occurred. These were: Fear; Worry; Catastrophization; Desire for Self Esteem; Blame and Stereotyping.