Mortality Anxiety as a Function of Intrinsic Religiosity and Perceived Purpose in Life

Abstract

Fear of dying and death may be universal, but individuals differ in their emotional reactions to dying and death. The present study included a sample of 133 Chinese university students who were Christians. The authors tested a mediation model which posited that intrinsic religiosity, but not extrinsic religiosity, lowered anxiety toward the dying and death of self and someone close through fostering perceived purpose in life. Structural Equation Modeling results supported a partial mediating role of purpose in life. Moreover, participants were more anxious toward the dying and death of someone close than those of themselves. Discussion focuses on the protective role of intrinsic religiosity on dying and death anxiety.

The study was conducted when Victoria Ka-Ying Hui was a Master of Philosophy student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

We are grateful to R. A. Neimeyer and the two reviewers for their valuable comments on the revision of the manuscript. We also thank the following people for their feedback and contributions to the initial design of the present questionnaire: Tse Yip Fai, Tse King, Li Tsz Yan, Kwok Ho Yan, Law Mei Ying, Yu Choi Ming, Lau Chau Wan, Lee Yee Lam, Lau Wai Kei, Wo Yaki, Kelly Siu, Tang Yuet Tin Anna, Leung Sing Yan Matthew, Poon Suet Ying, April Lau, Shum Ka Yee, Cheung Hoi Wah, Dannii Y-L Yueng, Echo L. Liao, Beth S-M Chiu, Dennis C-M Hui, Chester K-C Kam, and Bobbi.

Notes

*p < .05. **p < .01.

¹Intrinsic religiosity did not have any significant quadratic relationship with either kind of death or dying anxiety.

²Given that the sample size was small, four separate analyses were done to test four partial mediation models, each between intrinsic religiosity and one of the dying and death anxieties. It was found that perceived purpose in life still only mediated the relationship between intrinsic religiosity and personal dying anxiety.

³We also compared the partial mediation model to a second version of the nil mediation model to eliminate the possibility that the former produced smaller AIC and CAIC because of parsimony purpose in life measurement model. The second version of the nil mediation model contains all the six latent variables (intrinsic religiosity, purpose in life, the four dying and death anxieties), but the five structural pathways linking purpose in life to the other five latent variables are removed. Because the partial mediation model and the second version of nil mediation model were now nested models, as they differed in the number of structural pathways, chi-squared changed was used to determine which model was superior. It was found that the chi-square changed was significant, χ²(5, N = 133) = 15.96, p < .05, so the partial mediation model was still superior to the second version of the nil mediation model.

⁴Four t tests were conducted to test for gender differences on the four dying and death anxiety. The critical p value was set at .0125 using the Bonferroni correction. No significant gender difference was found on any of the dying and death anxiety.