The influence of religion on death anxiety and death acceptance

Parishioners (n = 130) of an Episcopal church in New York City participated in a survey to explore the relationship between the religiosity, death acceptance, and death anxiety. Among the four different types of religiosity measured by the Rohrbaugh and Jessor scale, theological religiosity was the only one to have a significant effect on death acceptance and death anxiety. Belief in God’s existence (r = −0.27), and belief in the afterlife (r = −0.25) were both negatively correlated with death anxiety (p < 0.01), and positively correlated with death acceptance (respectively, r = 0.21 and r = 0.22, p < 0.05). The effects remained significant even after controlling for a number of demographic variables using multiple regression procedures. Being a woman was the only demographic variable that was significantly correlated with greater anxiety about death. On average, women displayed significantly higher levels of death anxiety (M = 8.1, SD = 2.8) than men (M = 6.2, SD = 2.9).