Sixty subjects scoring high or low on a belief-in-afterlife (BA) scale were exposed to a death threat, shock threat, or control treatment. Only the high believers exposed to death threat showed an increase in score on an alternate BA scale; the scores of the other five groups remained unchanged. The results could not be attributed to anxiety alone, since self-ratings on anxiety did not differ between the death threat and the shock threat groups, although they were higher for these groups than for the control groups. The results were interpreted as confirming the hypothesis that strong BA may serve to deal with death anxiety.

No abstract