Hot, Cold, or Both? A Person-Centered Perspective on Death Awareness During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhong, Rui; Paluch, Rebecca M.; Shum, Vanessa; Zatzick, Christopher D.; Robinson, Sandra L.
• 署名单位: University of British Columbia; Simon Fraser University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0000931
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 839-855
• 关键词: death awareness; Well-being; prosocial behavior; Covid-19; LATENT PROFILE ANALYSIS

摘要

The COVID-19 pandemic-as an omnipresent mortality cue-heightens employees' awareness of their mortality and vulnerability. Extant research has identified two distinct forms of death awareness: death anxiety and death reflection. Because researchers have exclusively examined death anxiety and death reflection as independent and unique variables across individuals while overlooking their interplay and coexistence within individuals, we know little about whether and why employees can have different combined experiences of two forms of death awareness over a certain period of time (e.g., during the pandemic), and how these different employee experiences relate to theoretically and practically important work-relevant consequences. To address this gap in our knowledge, we adopted a person-centered approach using latent profile analysis to consider death anxiety and death reflection conjointly within employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two studies, we identified three distinct death awareness profiles-the disengaged, calm reflectors, and anxious reflectors-and found membership in these profiles systematically varied according to health- (e.g., risk of severe illness from COVID-19), work- (e.g., job-required human contact), and community-related (e.g., the number of regional infections) factors influencing the self-relevance of COVID-19 as a mortality cue. In addition, we found that these death awareness profiles differentially predicted important employee outcomes, including well-being (i.e., depression and emotional exhaustion) and prosocial behaviors at work (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviors and pro-diversity behavior).