Religiousness and death anxiety

The objective of this chapter was to try to analyse the relation between religion and death anxiety in different population groups. Empirical attempts to demonstrate this connection have met with mixed results: positive, negative or no relation has been found. In this review we used data from different studies to analyse this relation. We postulated the possible role of religion on death anxiety and the ways or mechanisms through which religion could exercise this influence. We analysed how different dimensions of religion (extrinsic and intrinsic religiousness) and different levels of religiousness could influence an emotional response to the phenomenon of death (real, vicarious or imagined death), specially, on death anxiety. Additionally, we analysed how the relation between religion and death anxiety could be mediated by other psychological variables, for example: perceived personal competence, general or trait-anxiety, optimism, perceived emotional intelligence, or other complex human emotions such as guilt, shame or spiritual pain. Finally, keeping in mind the aforementioned arguments, we proposed our theoretical model of the relationship between religion and death anxiety. © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.