Your Ego is Causing You Death Anxiety? The Roles of Egocentrism, Emotional Empathy, and Age on Death Anxiety

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Could focusing more on others reduce anxiety about the idea of death? This paper examines whether emotional empathy and egocentrism predict death anxiety levels. We hypothesize that egocentrism predicts higher levels of death anxiety due to its focus on self-preservation, while emotional empathy buffers death anxiety by shifting an individual&rsquo;s focus from self-preservation to connection and perspective-taking. 214 participants completed a questionnaire that included the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS), the Multidimensional Emotional Scale (MDEES), and the Egocentrism Scale. The results revealed an interaction between age and egocentrism on death anxiety, whereby egocentrism predicted higher death anxiety levels for older adults but not for younger adults. Similarly, emotional empathy predicted lower death anxiety levels for older adults, whereas younger adults with higher empathy reported greater death anxiety. The distinct impacts of empathy and egocentrism on younger and older adults suggest that death anxiety may manifest differently across the lifespan. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how self-focus versus other-focus influences perceptions of death.</span>