Individuals who have the strongest religious faith tend to have the lowest death anxiety. why?

Religiosity, often operationalized in terms of frequency of church attendance or prayer behavior, is related to higher levels of physical health, mental health, self-esteem, and well-being (Fry, 2000, Holt and Dellmann-Jenkins, 1992, Idler, 1987, Johnson, 1995, Kehn, 1995, Koenig et al., 1988, Koenig et al., 2001, Krause, 1995, Levin and Chatters, 1998, McFadden, 1995, Myers and Diener, 1995, Ochsmann, 1984, Paloutzian and Kirkpatrick, 1995). In most studies, variables such as social support and healthy lifestyles were shown to be partial mediators of relationships between religiosity and health outcomes—both physical health and mental health, including well-being (Argyle, 1999, Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi, 1997, Husaini et al., 1999, Idler, 1987, Koenig et al., 2001). However, such mediators did not explain all of the relationship between religiosity and health and well-being, pointing to the possible importance of other mediators. One such mediator may be religious belief. Links between religious belief and well-being are beginning to be investigated. Preliminary findings suggest surprisingly strong relationships between religious belief and well-being, particularly among Christians, for whom religious beliefs may be especially salient aspects of religious membership (Cohen, 2002, Cohen et al., in press, Cohen et al., 2003).

One way in which religious belief could promote well-being is by reducing fear of death (Aday, 1984–1985, Alvarado et al., 1995, Cicirelli, 1999, Cicirelli, 2001, Cicirelli, 2002, Fry, 2000, Ochsmann, 1984, Richardson et al., 1983, Swanson and Byrd, 1998, Thorson, 2000, Thorson and Powell, 1989, Thorson and Powell, 2000). Fear of death is a strong motivator of human behavior, including cultural affiliation. Terror management theory proposes that reminders of our mortality (which result in “mortality salience”) produce strong anxiety that people are motivated to reduce (Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989). One typical mortality salience manipulation is for participants to write essays about what they think will happen to them as they die, and about their thoughts and feelings about death. Control participants typically write essays about some other anxiety-producing topic, such as about an upcoming exam or a visit to the dentist. People who have been reminded of their mortality (mortality salience participants) punish a person who has violated their cultural ideals, such as a person guilty of prostitution, more harshly than do people who have not been reminded of their mortality (control participants). Because control participants often write essays about anxiety-producing topics, terror management effects do not seem to be explainable simply by anxiety in general. Terror management results are typically interpreted to relate to a desire to achieve symbolic immortality through one’s culture. Cultures outlive individuals, and so by reassuring themselves that they are good members of their culture, individuals can achieve a sort of symbolic, cultural immortality (Rosenblatt et al., 1989).

We would speculate that even more powerful than a motivation to achieve symbolic immortality would be a motivation to achieve actual immortality. An example (perhaps the only example) of actual immortality lies in religious concepts of the afterlife. Belief in an afterlife could provide an especially effective buffer against fear of death and thereby promote well-being. This is an important research question as death anxiety could pose a significant threat to people’s sense of well-being. This may be particularly true in younger adults, because their fear of death is higher than that of older adults (Cicirelli, 2001, Fortner and Neimeyer, 1999, Templer and Ruff, 1971, Tomer, 2000). Death anxiety has been related to existential well-being and spiritual well-being in a few studies (Chibnall et al., 2002, Heintz and Baruss, 2001). The interpretation of such results is somewhat problematic because of a significant amount of conceptual overlap between death anxiety, spiritual well-being, and existential well-being. Therefore, it is not clear how death anxiety might relate to global well-being. However, to our knowledge, no study has linked religiosity, death anxiety with global life satisfaction.

Studies have been done on the relationship of religious variables and death anxiety. The findings are mixed (see Leming, 1980; Thorson, 1991 for reviews). Belief in the afterlife and in related religious variables has been shown to be negatively correlated with fear of death in some studies (Aday, 1984–1985, Alvarado et al., 1995, Cicirelli, 2001, Cicirelli, 2002, Ochsmann, 1984, Richardson et al., 1983, Swanson and Byrd, 1998, Templer, 1972). However, a study in college students showed that religious variables did not correlate with death anxiety (Templer & Dotson, 1970). In addition, Thorson and Powell (1989) showed a non-significant correlation between a measure of intrinsic religiosity and death anxiety.

Of particular relevance to the terror management literature are studies looking at the relationships of death salience and belief in the afterlife. A few studies have been conducted, again with mixed results. Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) found that increased salience of death was associated with greater reported belief in an afterlife, though Ochsmann (1984) failed to replicate this finding. Peterson and Greil (1990), analyzing national probability sampling data from the 1984 General Social Survey, found that those participants who knew someone who died in the five years prior to being interviewed did have slightly higher levels of feeling close to God, literal belief in the Bible, regular prayer, and church attendance. Whereas controlling for education, income, sex, and age somewhat reduced the magnitude of the correlations, death experience was still associated with slightly higher levels of prayer and church attendance. In contrast, Berman (1974) found little support for the hypothesis that undergoing a life-threatening experience would increase belief in the afterlife. Recently, Dechesne et al. (2003) showed that people encouraged to believe in an afterlife did not show typical mortality salience effects via the terror management paradigm, as compared to people discouraged to believe in the afterlife.

We suggest that part of the reason that the literatures just discussed might be conflicting is because of an under-appreciation of what measures of religiosity would be most appropriate in these studies. In these types of research—and, indeed, in much research in psychology and religion—measures of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity (Allport & Ross, 1967) are commonly used (e.g., Swanson & Byrd, 1998). The core concept of intrinsic religiosity (IR), as originally proposed, is living one’s religion with sincerity and intentionality. In contrast, the core idea of extrinsic religiosity (ER), as originally proposed, is using religion for instrumental purposes, including for the cultivation of social relationships (Allport & Ross, 1967). IR has clearly and consistently been interpreted as being more normative than ER (Cohen et al., in press, Hunt and King, 1971).

Cohen and colleagues (in press) recently noted that IR appears to be related to private, emotional aspects of religiosity. For example, an item from Allport and Ross’ (1967) IR subscale is “The prayers I say when I am alone carry as much meaning and personal emotion as those said by me during services.” In contrast, community-related or social religious motivations for religion, as well as items tapping ritual or structural practice of religion, load on ER scales; they are thus seen as non-normative. For instance, the following item is from Allport and Ross’ (1967) ER subscale: “A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a congenial social activity.”

Very similar arguments can be made about other commonly used religiosity scales, as well. For instance, the internal and external religiosity scales formulated by Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993) clearly privilege private motivations for religion over social ones. Batson and colleagues (p. 169) stated in no uncertain terms an assumption that social motivations for religion were non-normative: “We assumed that religion that was a response to social influence would reflect an extrinsic, means orientation because it would presumably be motivated by a desire to gain the self-serving, extrinsic end of social approval.”

Cohen and colleagues (in press) noted that different religious communities see the relative value of private motivations for religiosity and social motivations for religiosity differently. In American Protestantism religions, private and emotional religious motivations are the gold standard (Lindbeck, 1984, MacIntyre, 1984). This may be related to the strong relationship between American Protestantism and individualism (e.g., Bellah et al., 1985, Markus and Kitayama, 1991, Snibbe and Markus, 2003). However, certain religions, such as Judaism and Catholicism are more collectivistic (Lynch, 2000, Sampson, 2000). Such collectivistic religions recognize social motivations and structural practices to be as normative as private, emotional motivations for religion (Cohen et al., in press). Therefore, Cohen and colleagues argued, the set of existing scales that measure IR and ER, including the most commonly used scales (Allport and Ross, 1967, Batson et al., 1993, Hoge, 1972), are most appropriate for use in American Protestant samples. Consequently, the scales may fail to adequately capture a sense of different normative religious motivations in different religions (Cohen et al., in press).

We thus propose that IR and ER scales may be of differential utility among Protestants and Catholics in examining links between religiosity, death anxiety, afterlife belief and life satisfaction. In this study, we investigated the relationships of IR and ER, belief in the afterlife, death anxiety, and life satisfaction among Catholic and Protestant adolescents and young adults. Given Cohen and colleagues (in press) analysis of the differential normative weights of items that load on IR and ER scales among Catholic and Protestants, our hypotheses were that (a) mean differences would be seen in the scales such that Catholics would score higher on ER and lower on IR than Protestants; (b) IR and ER would correlate more strongly with death anxiety and belief in the afterlife in Protestants as opposed to Catholics; (c) that path analytic regression analysis would show more of a path between IR and ER and life satisfaction among Protestants as compared to Catholics; and (d) and that religious affiliation (Catholic versus Protestant) would moderate relationships between IR and ER with death anxiety, belief in the afterlife, and life satisfaction.