X-Message-Number: 5236
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #5212 - #5225
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 95 17:13:13 +0100

In Message #5230
> From:  (Thomas Donaldson)


> About Stodolsky's recent posting which dealt with a poll on feelings re death:
> 

> Apparently, if we are to believe the poll, women are bothered by fear of death
> more than men. Yet more men than women become cryonicists.
> 

> Assuming this poll is correct and relevant (perhaps both are large 
assumptions)
> it may tell us something very interesting: most cryonicists have not become
> cryonicists because they fear death. And given that most are men, there may

> be a good explanation for why they join: cryonics is a means to CONTROL death,
> as we have tried through history to control many other events and things. It

This is a good point. The technical term is 'locus of control'. One
well known measure is Rotter's Internal-External Scale.
The following refs are appropriate:

Donovan, James M.
Validation of a Portuguese form of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale.
Psychological Reports
1993 Aug Vol 73(1) 195-200

Lomranz, Jacob; Shmotkin, Dov; Vardi, Relly
The equivocal meanings of time: Exploratory and structural analyses.
Current Psychology: Research & Reviews
1991 Spr-Sum Vol 10(1-2) 3-20
 
Damm, Peter Lee
A study of the relationships among death anxiety, life 
satisfaction, and locus-of-control.
Dissertation Abstracts International
1993 Oct Vol 54(4-B) 2193

Parsuram, Ameeta; Gandhi, Priyanka
Beliefs and death anxiety.
Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology
1994 Jul Vol 20(2) 145-152




> As for Stodolsky's most recent posting, almost all of it is crud. Yet one more
> THEORY of how we came to walk upright, and a discussion of history with no

> references or justification other than (perhaps) that of a political diatribe.

I gave the following refs:

(psycoloquy.94.5.8.evolution-thinking.1.sheets-johnstone 
Wed 26 Jan 1994 ISSN 1055-0143

(Kastenbaum (1991, p. 15) Death, society, and human experience
(4th ed))

(David Singer, et al.) He is Prof. of Political Science at U. of Michigan
Ann Arbor. Presented a talk at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution
in Copenhagen recently. 

Much of the rest of my comments draw on common knowledge in the field of
Peace and Conflict Resolution. As someone who has presented papers
at such conferences, I feel it is up to a non-specialist to document
that it is crud.

dss


David S. Stodolsky      Euromath Center     University of Copenhagen
   Tel.: +45 38 33 03 30   Fax: +45 38 33 88 80 (C)


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