title: More dead than dead: perceptions of persons in the persistent vegetative state.
abstract: Patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS) may be biologically alive, but these experiments indicate that people see PVS as a state curiously more dead than dead. Experiment 1 found that PVS patients were perceived to have less mental capacity than the dead. Experiment 2 explained this effect as an outgrowth of afterlife beliefs, and the tendency to focus on the bodies of PVS patients at the expense of their minds. Experiment 3 found that PVS is also perceived as "worse" than death: people deem early death better than being in PVS. These studies suggest that people perceive the minds of PVS patients as less valuable than those of the dead - ironically, this effect is especially robust for those high in religiosity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, MD 20742, USA. kurtgray@umd.edu
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: T Anne
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Knickman
authors.forename: Daniel M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Wegner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D003643:Death; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology; D018458:Persistent Vegetative State / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D012067:Religion; D055815:Young Adult