Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS)

1. Abstract

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS), developed by Donald I. Templer in 1970, represents one of the foundational and most extensively investigated self-report psychometric instruments designed to quantify thanatophobia and death-related distress in empirical psychology and behavioral medicine. Constructed to systematically overcome the psychometric deficiencies of earlier projective and semi-structured instruments, the DAS operationalizes death anxiety as an affective, cognitive, and existential construct reflecting conscious apprehension regarding personal nonexistence, physiological decline, terminal illness, and temporal transience. Comprising 15 self-administered items originally validated on a dichotomous True/False response format, the scale produces an omnibus score ranging from 0 to 15, where elevated cumulative values denote greater overt death anxiety. Although initially operationalized as a unidimensional measurement model, decades of subsequent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across culturally diverse clinical and non-clinical cohorts have delineated reliable multidimensional structures, typically resolving into four distinct second-order factors: Cognitive-Affective Fear of Death, Somatic and Illness Fears, Awareness of Time Transience, and Painful or Violent Extinction. The psychometric integrity of the DAS is substantiated by robust internal consistency estimates (ranging from α = .65 to .83 across diverse populations), notable temporal stability (three-week test-retest reliability of r = .83 in foundational cohorts), and exceptional convergent validity demonstrated through moderate-to-strong correlations with standardized measures of generalized anxiety, neuroticism, depression, and structural existential dread. As a psychometric pioneer, the DAS continues to serve as an indispensable measurement paradigm across existential psychology, psycho-oncology, palliative care, gerontology, and terror management research.

2. Keywords

Templer Death Anxiety Scale, thanatophobia, death anxiety, existential psychology, psychometrics, fear of death, terror management theory, psycho-oncology, terminal illness anxiety, death attitudes, scale validation

3. Authors

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale was formulated and psychometrically validated by Donald I. Templer, Ph.D. (1938–2016), an American clinical psychologist and psychometrician whose extensive academic contributions significantly advanced clinical thanatology and psychopathological assessment. During the development and initial validation of the DAS, Templer served within the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky, and subsequently maintained academic and clinical appointments at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) at Alliant International University in Fresno, California, as well as Western State Hospital in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Templer dedicated over four decades to investigating the psychological correlates of mortality salience, the intersection between psychiatric morbidity and existential dread, neuropsychological functioning, and the cross-cultural invariance of thanatological measurement tools. In subsequent cross-cultural adaptations and structural validity investigations, Templer collaborated widely with international behavioral scientists, including seminal research partnerships across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

4. Purpose

The fundamental objective of the Templer Death Anxiety Scale is to furnish a standardized, objective, and statistically robust methodology for quantifying conscious death anxiety across clinical, empirical, and community populations. Prior to the formulation of the DAS in 1970, the clinical assessment of death-related dread relied almost exclusively upon projective instruments, such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and structured sentence-completion tasks. These methods suffered from profound psychometric limitations, including low inter-rater reliability, dubious content validity, subjective scoring protocols, and an inability to be efficiently deployed across extensive empirical sample sizes. Templer engineered the DAS to bridge this critical empirical void, operationalizing conscious verbal expressions of death apprehension into a concise, easily scored, and psychometrically verifiable tool.

From an applied perspective, the DAS fulfills critical diagnostic and investigative functions across several distinct psychological disciplines:

• Clinical and Health Psychology: The DAS enables clinicians to identify and monitor morbid preoccupations with mortality that exacerbate formal mood and anxiety spectrum disorders. High death anxiety frequently operates as a potent transdiagnostic vulnerability factor in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), hypochondriasis (illness anxiety disorder), generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Systematic quantification via the DAS allows practitioners to tailor exposure hierarchies and cognitive restructuring protocols targeting catastrophic interpretations of mortality.
• Palliative Care, Oncology, and Medical Thanatology: Among patients diagnosed with advanced, terminal, or life-limiting somatic illnesses, the DAS functions as an essential screener for existential distress. Health professionals utilize the scale to evaluate baseline existential suffering, monitor psychological adaptation to disease progression, and measure the therapeutic efficacy of palliative interventions, existential psychotherapy, and dignified end-of-life care planning.
• Gerontological Assessment: In aging demographics, the DAS serves to elucidate the relationship between perceived chronological proximity to death, physical decline, and psychological well-being. Empirical findings indicate that while older adults often demonstrate lower baseline death anxiety relative to young adults, individuals exhibiting compromised ego integrity, severe functional impairment, or acute cognitive decline manifest clinically concerning elevations on the DAS.
• Empirical Thanatology and Experimental Social Psychology: The scale represents an indispensable methodological tool within Terror Management Theory (TMT) paradigms. Researchers routinely administer the DAS to assess individual differences in baseline mortality salience, evaluate self-esteem buffering mechanisms, and examine the psychological defenses mobilized when subjects confront the inevitability of physical cessation.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the Templer Death Anxiety Scale is death anxiety (thanatophobia), defined as an unpleasant, multi-faceted emotional and cognitive state provoked by the contemplation of personal extinction, the process of dying, somatic disintegration, and the unknown dimensions of mortality. Unlike necrophobia, which constitutes a specific phobic aversion toward dead bodies or objects associated with the deceased, death anxiety represents a broader, pervasive existential apprehension centered on the termination of one’s subjective consciousness and agency. Although Templer originally conceptualized the scale as a globally integrated construct reflecting conscious fear, theoretical advances and psychometric structural evaluations delineate four distinct underlying conceptual dimensions:

1. Cognitive-Affective Dread of Personal Nonexistence

This primary dimension captures the explicit, conscious emotional distress, panic, and philosophical disquiet elicited by the prospect of no longer existing. It reflects fundamental existential angst—the profound vulnerability human beings experience upon confronting the fragility of life. Exemplified by items such as “I am very much afraid to die” and “The thought of death never bothers me” (reverse scored), this component gauges the degree to which thoughts of extinction directly disrupt emotional equilibrium, inducing pervasive dread and subjective vulnerability.

2. Somatic and Disease-Related Preoccupations

Death anxiety rarely exists in a purely philosophical vacuum; it is deeply tethered to visceral somatic fears regarding physical decay, chronic morbidity, and biological vulnerability. This sub-dimension measures anxiety provoked by physiological breakdowns that act as proximate precursors to death, notably life-threatening medical diagnoses and catastrophic bodily events. Items such as “I am really scared of having a heart attack” and “I am not particularly afraid of getting cancer” (reverse scored) operationalize the intense somatic vigil and hypochondriacal anticipation that characterize thanatological distress.

3. Temporal Transience and Awareness of Life’s Brevity

Existential awareness of death is fundamentally intertwined with the subjective perception of linear time. This cognitive dimension encapsulates the distress engendered by the relentless forward march of time, aging, and the perceived brevity of human life. Reflected in items such as “I am often distressed by the way time flies so very rapidly” and “I often think about how short life really is,” this dimension gauges an individual’s struggle to assimilate the impermanence of lived experience into a meaningful autobiographical narrative.

4. Anticipation of Violent, Painful, or Traumatic Extinction

The final facet operationalizes visceral terror regarding the mechanical, traumatic, or agonizing processes through which biological cessation can occur. This entails not only the fear of extreme physical agony during the dying phase (“I fear dying a painful death”) but also catastrophic social, global, or surgical hazards (“I shudder when I hear people talk about a World War III”; “The sight of a dead body is horrifying to me”). It distinguishes the philosophical abstraction of nonexistence from the acute dread of traumatic physical suffering and biological mutilation.

6. Theoretical Framework

The intellectual infrastructure of the Templer Death Anxiety Scale is anchored in the convergence of existential-phenomenological philosophy, psychodynamic drive theory, cognitive-behavioral appraisal theory, and modern terror management mechanics.

Existential Psychotherapy and Meaning-Making

The foundational bedrock of death anxiety conceptualization emerges from existential psychology, notably articulated by figures such as Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Viktor Frankl, and Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom posited that death is one of the four core “ultimate concerns of existence” (alongside freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness). According to existential frameworks, human beings are uniquely characterized by the paradox of possessing an instinctual drive toward survival alongside the cognitive capacity to comprehend their inevitable, inescapable mortality. Death anxiety represents the primary existential response to this paradox. In individuals who have successfully cultivated authentic meaning, coherence, and life satisfaction, death anxiety is integrated and buffered; conversely, when existential coherence fails, death anxiety erupts as overt dread, manifesting across the affective and somatic channels measured by the DAS.

Psychodynamic Perspectives and Ego Psychology

In classical psychoanalytic theory, Sigmund Freud initially asserted that the unconscious mind cannot conceive of its own biological termination, arguing that overt death anxiety invariably masked castration anxiety, repressed guilt, or unresolved intrapsychic conflicts. However, post-Freudian theorists, including Erik Erikson, radically revised this paradigm by situating death anxiety within an epigenetic developmental lifespan model. Erikson’s eighth psychosocial stage—Ego Integrity vs. Despair—directly theorizes that individuals approaching the twilight of life must synthesize their lived history to achieve integrity. A failure to achieve ego integrity culminates in pervasive despair, neurosis, and acute death anxiety, directly aligning with Templer’s empirical findings concerning heightened DAS scores among older adults experiencing compromised psychological adaptation.

Terror Management Theory (TMT)

Formulated by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski, drawing heavily from cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s seminal work The Denial of Death (1973), Terror Management Theory explains how humans manage the paralyzing terror of mortality. TMT posits that human culture and individual self-esteem serve as psychological dual-component anxiety buffers designed to shield the organism from debilitating death dread. By subscribing to cultural worldviews (which promise symbolic immortality via religious, scientific, or artistic legacies) and perceiving oneself as a valuable contributor within that framework, death anxiety is typically kept outside of conscious awareness. The Templer DAS directly registers instances wherein these cultural and psychological buffers fracture, permitting death thoughts to penetrate consciousness and manifest as observable psychophysiological distress.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Templer Death Anxiety Scale has been established through exhaustive empirical research spanning more than five decades across diverse clinical, non-clinical, and transcultural populations.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In his seminal 1970 validation work, Templer established the scale’s construct validity by demonstrating statistically significant correlations between the DAS and established affective inventories. Templer administered the DAS alongside the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS) and the Welsh Anxiety Scale (WAS) to large cohorts of college undergraduates, obtaining significant positive correlations of r = .27 to .36 with the TMAS and r = .30 to .39 with the WAS. Subsequent studies revealed robust convergent associations with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), yielding trait-anxiety correlations typically ranging between r = .35 and .45, confirming that while death anxiety shares common variance with generalized neurotic distress, it possesses unique variance distinct from broad trait apprehension.

Convergent validity was further reinforced by evaluating the DAS against specialized psychiatric inventories. The DAS correlates positively with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Depression (D) scale (r = .33) and Psychasthenia (Pt) scale (r = .38). In thanatological research, the DAS correlates heavily (r = .60 to .75) with concurrent death attitude scales, such as the Boyar Fear of Death Scale (FODS) and the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (CLFDS), verifying robust construct overlap with validated thanatophobia indices.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by showing that DAS scores remain largely independent of generalized intelligence, response style bias, and cognitive ability. Templer (1970) reported non-significant correlations between the DAS and the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test (r = .06), indicating that death anxiety does not covary with general intellectual functioning. Furthermore, correlations between the DAS and social desirability, as indexed by the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale, have consistently fallen within negligible parameters (typically ranging between r = −.05 and −.18 across empirical literature), confirming that respondents do not substantially manipulate DAS responses to align with perceived social expectations.

Criterion and Known-Groups Validity

Templer demonstrated striking known-groups validity in his initial 1970 study. The DAS was administered to a cohort of psychiatric patients hospitalized with severe depressive and anxiety diagnoses who had verbally expressed acute, unsolicited death fears during clinical intakes. These patients demonstrated a mean DAS score of 11.62, which was profoundly higher than the mean score of 6.77 obtained from a matched psychiatric control group without death-related complaints (p < .001). Additionally, medical cohorts diagnosed with life-threatening conditions (such as end-stage renal disease, advanced cardiovascular pathologies, or metastatic malignancies) systematically obtain higher mean DAS values relative to healthy age-matched community baselines, cementing the scale’s sensitivity to acute somatic and mortality challenges.

8. Reliability

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale demonstrates robust and reproducible reliability metrics across a broad spectrum of demographic, psychiatric, and transcultural contexts.

Internal Consistency

In Templer’s foundational 1970 publication, internal consistency was initially computed using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20) due to the binary, dichotomous scoring format. Templer reported a KR-20 coefficient of .76 among college cohorts, reflecting adequate homogeneity among the 15 items given the breadth of the underlying construct. Subsequent replications utilizing dichotomous scoring across standard adult samples have generally yielded Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients ranging between .65 and .78. When investigators employ modernized 5-point or 7-point Likert continuous scaling adaptations of the original 15 items, internal consistency coefficients consistently increase, frequently achieving α values between .78 and .85. Transcultural validation studies across European, East Asian, and Middle Eastern linguistic cohorts (e.g., Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Spanish translations) reliably report Cronbach’s alphas exceeding the standard psychometric threshold of ≥ .70 (e.g., Tavakoli & Ahmadzadeh, 2011, reporting α = .73 to .79).

Test-Retest Temporal Stability

The temporal stability of the DAS is exceptionally sound over designated test-retest intervals. Templer’s original investigation administered the DAS twice to a cohort of 31 undergraduate students across an intervening three-week latency window, yielding a Pearson product-moment stability coefficient of r = .83 (p < .001). Subsequent empirical longitudinal studies confirming stability have demonstrated test-retest coefficients ranging from r = .76 over a 4-week interval to r = .68 over protracted multi-month observation periods in stable, unexposed control participants, indicating that while conscious death anxiety possesses contextual fluctuations in response to immediate trauma or therapy, the baseline trait construct remains stable across time.

9. Factor Analysis

Although Donald Templer initially designed the DAS as an unifactorial measure of generalized death anxiety, intensive empirical scrutiny across five decades has demonstrated that the 15-item inventory reflects a multidimensional latent structure.

Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA)

Seminal factor analytic investigations by Lonetto, Fleming, and Mercer (1979), Devins et al. (1981), and Conte et al. (1982) repeatedly demonstrated that the DAS reliably decomposes into three to four principal factors. Lonetto and colleagues identified a definitive four-factor orthogonal solution that accounted for the vast majority of common variance:

• Factor 1: Cognitive-Affective Preoccupations and Fear of Death (Items 1, 3, 5, 7)—Item loadings on this primary factor range from .58 to .78, capturing conscious existential apprehension and emotional vulnerability regarding personal death.
• Factor 2: Physical Somatic Fears and Terminal Illness (Items 4, 6, 9, 11)—Item loadings range from .45 to .72, capturing intense dread of heart attacks, cancer, undergoing surgical operations, and experiencing prolonged somatic agony.
• Factor 3: Temporal Awareness and Life Transience (Items 2, 8, 12)—Item loadings range from .51 to .68, reflecting heightened sensitivity to the rapid flight of time and the subjective shortness of human existence.
• Factor 4: Traumatic, Violent, and Macabre Anticipations (Items 10, 13, 14, 15)—Item loadings range from .42 to .65, measuring visceral aversion to cadavers, horrific external catastrophes (World War III), and ambiguous afterlife concerns.

Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) and Fit Indices

Contemporary psychometric evaluations employing Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have systematically pitted the original unidimensional model against alternative multidimensional structures. CFA evaluations across both clinical cohorts and cross-cultural university samples demonstrate that the unidimensional model exhibits mediocre-to-poor fit indices (χ²/df > 3.5, CFI < .85, RMSEA > .08). In contrast, the Lonetto four-factor model and related second-order hierarchical specifications demonstrate superior goodness-of-fit metrics, commonly yielding χ²/df ratios between 1.45 and 2.10, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) values between .92 and .96, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) values ≥ .91, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) values ranging between .038 and .055 with 90% confidence intervals well within psychometric standards.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS)
• Alternate Acronyms: DAS, TDAS
• Primary Author: Donald I. Templer, Ph.D.
• Original Publication Date: 1970
• Test Format: Standardized self-administered psychological inventory (paper-and-pencil, computer-administered, or clinical interview)
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 15 to geriatric populations); applicable across community, medical, psychiatric, and research contexts
• Total Number of Items: 15 items
• Response Scale (Authentic Original): Dichotomous True / False response format
  • True
  • False
• Scoring Protocol and Directionality:
  • Each item is scored either 1 (indicative of death anxiety) or 0 (absence of death anxiety).
  • Directly Scored Items (True = 1 point, False = 0 points): Items 1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. (Endorsement of ‘True’ reflects high death anxiety).
  • Reverse Scored Items (False = 1 point, True = 0 points): Items 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 15. (Endorsement of ‘False’ reflects high death anxiety; endorsement of ‘True’ reflects emotional resilience or denial).
• Cumulative Score Range: 0 to 15 points total.
  • 0 – 4: Exceptionally low death anxiety (may reflect pronounced emotional resilience, existential serenity, or unconscious defensive suppression/denial).
  • 5 – 7: Normal, normative baseline range for typical non-clinical community cohorts.
  • 8 – 11: Moderate death anxiety (frequently observed in medical cohorts, elderly populations confronting acute physical morbidity, or individuals in stressful life transitions).
  • 12 – 15: Severe, clinically elevated death anxiety (indicative of acute existential dread, clinical thanatophobia, or comorbid psychiatric distress warranting targeted psychotherapeutic exploration).
• Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale was formulated and published in 1970 in The Journal of General Psychology. Dr. Donald I. Templer released the scale into the scientific and academic domain to stimulate empirical research in clinical psychology, thanatology, and behavioral science. Under standard international fair-use conventions for scientific instruments published within public domain academic literature, the DAS is widely accessible at no cost (free of charge) for non-commercial educational, scientific, clinical, and biomedical research initiatives. No formal commercial licensing fees or proprietary royalties are required for clinical or academic use. However, researchers, psychologists, and health organizations employing the scale must provide formal academic attribution by citing Templer’s foundational 1970 validation treatise in all associated publications, empirical monographs, and programmatic clinical reports.

12. References

• Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. Free Press.
• Conte, H. R., Weiner, M. B., & Plutchik, R. (1982). Measuring death anxiety: Conceptual, psychometric, and factor-analytic aspects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43(4), 775–785. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.43.4.775
• Devins, G. M., Binik, Y. M., Gorman, P., Denzer, M., Mandin, H., & Shapiro, C. M. (1981). The factor structure of the Death Anxiety Scale. Journal of General Psychology, 105(2), 209–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221309.1981.9711000
• Erikson, E. H. (1982). The life cycle completed: A review. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10
• Hoelterhoff, M. E. (2010). Resilience against death anxiety in relationship to post-traumatic stress disorder and psychiatric co-morbidity (Doctoral dissertation, University of Plymouth). PEARL. http://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/pearl_jspui/bitstream/10026.1/306/4/Hoelterhoff%20M%20E_2010.pdf
• Lonetto, R., Fleming, G. F., & Mercer, G. W. (1979). The factor structure of the Death Anxiety Scale: A research note. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 35(4), 787–788. http://www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/1000520112101.pdf
• Templer, D. I. (1970). The construction and validation of a Death Anxiety Scale. The Journal of General Psychology, 82(2), 165–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221309.1970.9920634
• Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.

13. Items of the Scale