Wisdom lies in being able to separate the inevitable from the avoidable. Death is the former, public speaking/ loss of independence the latter.

Even so I would say, most would speak to a crowd than take the firing squad any day. Worth asking the same questions in China, perhaps?

Wisdom lies in being able to separate the inevitable from the avoidable. Death is the former, public speaking/ loss of independence the latter.

Even so I would say, most would speak to a crowd than take the firing squad any day. Worth asking the same questions in China, perhaps?

Which do you fear more: death, or agonizing torture ending in death?

The probable reason why more seniors fear "moving into a nursing home" or "loss of independence" is because there's an implicit "...ending in death" tacked on the end of those. They aren't exactly mutually exclusive options.

Bear in mind the research does say exactly what the people paying for it wanted it to say - that old people want to live independently, and ooh, what a coincidence, we flog a bunch of stuff that helps them do that.

Of course pretty much all market research is funded by a vested interest, but that just means all market research has to be taken with a grain of salt. Particularly when, as Rob says, all the answers implicitly end in "death" anyway.

The interesting thing about the question "Which do you fear more: death, or agonizing torture ending in death?" is that most people would answer "torture then death" if asked while in a comfy chair, but when the choice is right in front of them, people tend to choose the hard option. That is, most people, when they hear a knock on the door from a gang of mobsters or secret policemen or CIA agents whom they can be reasonably certain will torture and eventually kill them, will still let themselves be taken. The option of a relatively quick death almost always exists - if a gun or cyanide pill or breakable glass isn't available, attacking the torturers with enough violence to make them use lethal force is possible. But few people do. People value life so highly that they will choose to go on living even if the remainder of that life is going to be nothing but agony. Otherwise euthanasia would be a lot more common.