COVID-19 and perceiving finitude: Associations with future time perspective, death anxiety, and ideal life expectancy.

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic threatens the health, future, and life of individuals and might hence accentuate perceptions of the fragility and finitude of life. We investigated how different perceptions of the pandemic (regarding the virus as a health threat and perceiving social and financial restrictions due to the pandemic) relate to different perceptions of life's finitude (i.e., future time perspective, death anxiety, and ideal life expectancy). Using longitudinal data from 1,042 adults (68% women; aged 18-95 years) gathered within the first and within the second peak of the pandemic in Germany, we expected decreases in future time perspective and ideal life expectancy, as well as increases in death anxiety in response to threatening perceptions of the pandemic. The results indicated decreasing future time perspectives, an accentuation of death anxiety right at the beginning of the pandemic, as well as stable ideal life expectancies. There was a tendency for more pronounced change among older adults. Initial levels and changes in the perceptions of finitude could partly be explained by initial and changing perceptions of the pandemic. Next to perceptions targeting the threat of the virus itself, perceptions of strong social and financial restrictions during the pandemic contributed to an altered stance toward the finitude of life. Concluding, we discuss stability and variation in perceptions of the finitude of life during a time of major societal change and a potentially life-threatening pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).