Abstract
The chapter reviews research findings on the degree to which religion faith, including religious beliefs, are associated with death anxiety (i.e., fear of death and the unknown after death). The research shows that Americans who practice their faith as an end in itself (internal religious motivation) have less fear of death than those who view religion as a means to achieve social goals (external religious motivation), and that the salutary association between internal religiosity and fear of death is mediated by the fact that individuals who have internalized their religious faith are more likely to believe in life-after-death. The findings of numerous, relatively small U.S. studies, which primarily surveyed Christians, indicate that belief in life-after-death tends to be negatively associated with death anxiety/fear of death. The results of four large-scale studies that specifically examined the positive and negative association of other religious beliefs with death anxiety also are described. However, research indicates that people have various fears about death, some of which are not affected by their belief in an afterlife and some of which seem to be affected more by other aspects of religious faith.
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Notes
- 1.
The studies were grouped into tables by whether they reported a statistically significant inverse (or negative) association, a statistically significant direct (or positive negative) association, or no statistically significant association between religious motivation and death anxiety. The term “statistically significant” means that the observed result is very unlikely to have occurred by chance.
- 2.
The term “significant” is often used as shorthand for “statistically significant.”
- 3.
Two studies were excluded because they did not report bivariate correlations and the third study was excluded because it was conducted in Hong Kong.
- 4.
Correlation is a statistical procedure that measures the degree of association between two numerical variables. A positive correlation means that when one variable increases in magnitude the other variable also increases in magnitude. A negative correlation means that when one variable increases the other variable decreases. Pearson’s correlation coefficient is the most commonly used correlation measure; its coefficient is symbolized as r. A positive correlation coefficient ranges between 0 and 1; a negative correlation coefficient ranges between 0 and −1.
- 5.
I took a closer look at the U.S. samples to see if the differences in the findings might be attributable to differences in the samples or other features of the study. Based on their differences in methodology, four general factors might have accounted for the different results: the dependent variables, the independent variables, the sample size, and the sample composition with respect to religion. Statistical analyses of these four factors found no evidence that any of them affected the proportion of studies reporting significant correlations, or the direction or size of the correlations.
- 6.
The first three studies used probability (i.e., randomly selected) samples. The sample sizes of the first two studies were N = 1211 and N = 1154 (N is the number of persons in a sample from a population.).
- 7.
The first two studies analyzed the data with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression; the demographic variables in both studies were age, education, gender, and race. Regression is a statistical procedure that measures the degree of association of one numerical variable with one or more other numerical variables.
- 8.
The belief that one collaborates with God was measured with three items:“I rely on God to help me control my life”; “I can succeed with God’s help”; and “All things are possible when I work together with God.”
- 9.
Beta (β) is a measure of association that is very similar to Pearson’s r, and it is identical to r when there are only two variables in an OLS regression analysis.
- 10.
The data came from the 2013–2014 “Landmark Spirituality and Health Survey,” which was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The sample size for this study was 2783. The NORC also conducts the biennial “General Social Survey.”
- 11.
Religious hope was measured by three items: “My religious or spiritual beliefs help me see that things will turn out well in the future”; “My religious or spiritual beliefs help me see that the future will bring opportunities for a better life”; and “My religious or spiritual beliefs help me see that the future looks bright for me.”
- 12.
The third and fourth studies analyzed their data using structural equation modeling (SEM), which combines OLS regression with factor analysis. The third study controlled for the same variables controlled in the first and second studies.
- 13.
N = 634; The study used OLS regression, controlling for age, gender, and multiple measures of religion. Religious doubt was measured with a 15-item scale, which included items about questioning the existence of God, wondering why God allows suffering and evil to exist in the world, dissatisfaction with clergy and church leaders, and the disparate viewpoints of the world offered by science and religion.
- 14.
This is different from the measure of association in correlation (e.g., Pearson’s r) and the measure of association in OLS regression (β), in which values closer to 1 represent stronger associations and values farther away from 1 represent weaker associations.
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Flannelly, K.J. (2017). Religion and Death Anxiety. In: Religious Beliefs, Evolutionary Psychiatry, and Mental Health in America. Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52488-7_16
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