Death and deities: A social cognitive perspective

written by Jonathan Jong & Jamin Halberstadt
edited by Namkje Koudenburg

Testing the relationship between fear of death and religious belief

One seemingly simple approach to the question would be to ask whether people who are relatively receptive to religious beliefs do indeed feel comforted about death, even when they do not hold a religious worldview. However, the theoretical relation between religiosity and death anxiety is not as straightforward as it appears. For those who already have a religious worldview, religious belief may be available as a resource to buffer anxiety, but for those who do notbelieve, anxiety might provide a motivation to do so, such that these individuals are more inclined to believe as their anxiety increases. Thus, the relation between religious beliefs and fear of death may depend on prior religious commitment: as atheists increasingly fear death they are increasingly tempted to believe in God, whereas those who already believe in God successfully use that belief to allay their fear of death.

Indeed, although the correlational data on religiosity and death anxiety are mixed and inconclusive (Donovan, 1994), some sense may be made of them by taking into account participants’ prior religious leanings. For example, Harding, Flannelly, Weaver, and Costa (2005), surveyed Christians and found negative correlations between death-related anxiety and belief in God and an afterlife, whereas Dezutter et al. (2009) studied a predominantly non-religious sample and found a positive relationship between fear of death and literal interpretations of Christian faith. Relatedly, Cohen, Pierce, Chambers, Meade, Gorvine, and Koenig (2005) found that death- anxiety was negatively correlated with Protestants’ “intrinsic religiosity” (roughly, the extent to which they embrace religious beliefs as important in themselves; Allport & Ross, 1967), but positively correlated with “extrinsic religiosity” (roughly, the extent to which their beliefs are merely useful means to some other practical end; Allport & Ross, 1967). Similarly, in our own recent survey of university students, the half who identified themselves as religious reported less fear of death to the extent they endorsed the existence of supernatural agents and events (God, angels, heaven, etc.), whereas the half who identified as non-religious showed the reverse trend: for them, greater fear of death was associated with a stronger inclination toward religious belief (Jong, Bluemke, & Halberstadt, 2012; for conceptually similar results see: Aday, 1984–1985; Dolnick, 1987; Downey, 1984; Leming, 1979– 1980; McMordie, 1981; Nelson & Cantrell, 1980; Wen, 2010; Wink & Scott, 2005).

The fact that non-religious people—atheists, agnostics, as well as the more nominally non-religious—appear to seek solace in religious beliefs, seems to argue that these beliefs are comforting in themselves (presumably via their implications for literal immortality), and not because they fit their worldviews. But is increased anxiety about death the cause of enhanced religious belief? Or is decreased religious belief the cause of lower anxiety about death? Atheism is, after all, a worldview, and a positive correlation between anxiety and religious belief may simply reflect that, like their Christian counterparts, atheists relieve their existential anxiety by bolstering their own beliefs, which in their case happen to include a denial of God.

magazine issue 5 2012 / Issue 15