Individual differences and anxiety reactions to dissection of human corpses in first year students of medicine

The object of this article is to present a line of investigation which the Faculty of Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid has been carrying out. The purpose of this line of investigation is to analyse the nature of the anxiety response seen in first year students when faced with the dissection of human corpses. The results obtained initially show that the novelty and/or uncertain nature of the situation play a fundamental role in the anxiety responses, which decrease after repeated exposure to the situation. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that if, as well as taking into account the characteristics of the situation, new variables are introduced into the study such as internal or personality characteristics, the anxiety reaction of the students faced with their first experience of the dissection of a human corpse, is affected predominantly in the first moment by the actual situation, with the subsequent individual differences in the trait anxiety, permitting us to predict the reactions of the students.