Hirschmüller Sarah, Egloff Boris
Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 May 15;9:683. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00683. eCollection 2018.
Executions are one form of death that can be assumed to be maximally anxiety provoking. Words spoken by death row inmates moments before their execution can provide valuable insights into people's end-of-life communication needs and themes, conveying what individuals choose to express to others in the face of imminent death. In this focused review, we describe findings from quantitative and qualitative text analysis studies that have analyzed affective experiences and meaning-making attempts in transcriptions of actual statements made by Texas death row inmates. Overall, the most prevalent content themes identified in these final acts of verbal communication in the reviewed studies consisted of a strong predominance of emotional positivity, messages to relevant social others, and spiritual references. We subsequently view the reviewed findings in the light of additional research in which people's conceptions of death and dying were explored and language studies in which people's communication before other forms of death was analyzed. Finally, we describe open questions and directions for future analyses of death row inmates' final statements, and we outline practical implications.
处决是一种可被认为会引发极大焦虑的死亡形式。死囚在处决前片刻所说的话，能为人们临终时的沟通需求和主题提供宝贵见解，传达出个体在面对即将到来的死亡时选择向他人表达的内容。在这篇重点综述中，我们描述了定量和定性文本分析研究的结果，这些研究分析了得克萨斯州死囚实际陈述转录本中的情感体验和意义建构尝试。总体而言，在所审查研究中，这些言语交流的最后行为中确定的最普遍内容主题包括强烈的情感积极倾向、给相关社会他人的信息以及精神层面的提及。随后，我们根据探索人们对死亡和临终观念的其他研究以及分析人们在其他死亡形式之前沟通情况的语言研究，审视所审查的研究结果。最后，我们描述了关于死囚最后陈述未来分析的开放性问题和方向，并概述了实际意义。
