The Role of Religion in Death Attitudes: Distinguishing between Religious Belief and Style of Processing Religious Contents

Although it is widely assumed that religiosity plays an important role in individuals' attitudes about death, research to date has failed to reveal consistent associations between religiosity and death attitudes. Drawing from Wulff's multidimensional model of religiosity, the present study examined associations between religion and death attitudes. First, results show that religious people are more likely to endorse an approach acceptance attitude towards death, indicating that religiosity as such is related to belief in afterlife. Second, people holding a literal attitude towards religion report more death anxiety, indicating that the processing of religious contents is related to defensiveness vis-a-vis death.