Religiosity and fear of death: a three‐nation comparison

Abstract

Numerous studies have sought to determine if religiosity is correlated with fear of death. Findings have been anything but consistent, with reports of negative relationships, positive relationships, no relationship, and even curvilinear associations. To shed light on this still contentious issue, the present study was undertaken among college students in three countries – Malaysia, Turkey, and the United States. Overall, the patterns in all three countries were similar. When linearity was assumed, there is a substantial positive correlation between most religiosity measures and fear of death. Assuming curvilinearity added slightly to the strength of the relationships in the US data and nothing to data from Malaysia or Turkey. Other findings were that on average females were more religious and feared death more than did males, and Muslims expressed considerably greater fear than did members of any other major religion. Results were discussed in the context of a new theory – called death apprehension theory. Among other things, it specifically predicts that death apprehension will be positively related to most religious beliefs and practices.

Keywords:

• fear of death
• death anxiety
• belief in immortality
• religion
• religiosity
• sex differences
• buffering hypothesis
• terror management theory
• death apprehension theory

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the efforts of the following persons in recruiting research participants for this study: Drew H. Bailey, Hasan Buker, David Geary, Richard D. Hartley, Richard Lippa, Emi Prihatin, David Puts, Anthony Walsh, and Alan Widmayer. We are also grateful to all who were kind enough to complete a copy of the questionnaire.