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Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology1983, Vol.44, No. 3, 600-607 Copyright 1983 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0022-3S14/83/4403-0600$00.75

Fear of Personal Death:Attribution, Structure, and Relation to Religious BeliefVictor FlorianSchool of Social WorkUniversity of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Shlomo RravetzBar-Ilan UniversityRamat-Gan, IsraelThe present investigation hypothesized that individuals attribute the fear of theirow n death to the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal consequencesof human mortality. A multidimensional measure of fear of personal death wasconstructed and administered togetherwith an index of Jewish belief and practiceto 178 young adult males. Principal-components factor analysis of this measureuncovered a factor structure that paralleled the hypothesized aspects of fear ofpersonal death. This factor structurewasshown to reflect quantitative differencesbetween persons characterizedby varying degreesof religious commitment.

The present study adopted a multidimen-sional approach as part of its attempt to clar-ify the manner in which individuals attributethe fear of their death to various conse-quences of personal mortality. This approachfocused research efforts on the substance andstructure of individual differences regardingthe meaning of death. For this reason, thisapproach should serve to clarify the relationbetween fear of personal death and religiousbelief.Social and behavioral science have viewedfear of death from two different perspectives.One perspective considers preoccupation withfear of death as morbid and pathological(Feifel, 1959; Klein, 1948; Stekel, 1949;Templer, 1970, 1972a), whereas the otherperceives the fear of death as a significantcharacteristic of natural and normal humanexperience (Kastenbaum & Aisenberg, 1972;Lepp, 1968; Zilboorg, 1943). This investi-gation was guided by the latter perspective.Because normal awareness of human mor-tality is expressed in a variety of ways, theterms used to analyze it are often ambiguous.Clear and specific definitions are necessaryto advance understanding of the fear of deathin normal populations. Collett and Lester's

This study is based on a thesis submitted by the firstauthor to the Department of Psychology at Bar-Ilan Uni-versity during 1979 in partial fulfillment of the require-ments for the doctoral degree.Requests for reprints should be sent to Shlomo Krav-etz, Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ra-mat-Gan, Israel.

(1969) typology is an important contributionto the development of a definitional systemfor pinpointing salient aspects of the naturalfear of death for specific study. Research con-sequent upon this typology indicates that thefear of one's own death is sufficiently inde-pendent of the other kinds of fear of deathto be considered a separate psychological en-tity (Durlak, 1972; Nelson & Nelson, 1975).This study refers to the former kind of fearof death as the fear of personal death.Most previous attempts to deal with thisissue limited themselves either to the extentof such preoccupation (Cameron, 1968;Dickstein & Blatt, 1966; Durlak, 1973) or tothe intensity of the fear associated with suchpreoccupation (Boyar, 1964; Lester, 1971;Templer, 1970). These studies only producedunidimensional measures of fear of personaldeath by means of which the intensity of anindividual's conscious death anxiety can beascertained. They did not tap the qualitativedifferences in the meanings that individualsm ay attach to their death. Knowledge of suchqualitative individual differences could beessential to the comprehension and appre-ciation of the complexity of fear of personaldeath. Thus, one of the principal recommen-dations that Kastenbaum and Costa (1977)derived from their review of the current sta-tus of the psychological investigation of deathwas that research methodology in this areamust be multidimensional.On the basis of the above considerations,the present study tested a multidimensional

600


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model of the meanings underlying fear ofpersonal death. This model is a distillationof a comparative analysis of the theoreticaland empirical work of Murphy (1959), Dig-gory and Rothman (1965), Kastenbaum andAisenberg (1972), and Minton and Spilka(1976), Content analysis of these researchers'theoretical suggestions indicates that directexpressions of fear of personal death can belinked to three components. These compo-nents refer to the intrapersonal, interper-sonal, and transpersonal consequences ofdeath. Fear of personal death may be due tothe expected impact of death oil mind andbody and on relatives and friends. It may alsoarise from beliefs concerning the transcen-dental nature of the self.The meanings that individuals attach totheir own death can especially be expectedto reflect variation in personal and socialbackground. Of all the personal and socialvariables reviewed and investigated by Feifeland Branscomb (1973), Feifel and Nagy(198*1), and Schulz (1978), degree and kindof religious belief seem to promise the mostinsight into the manner in which individualscope with their awareness of death. Jackson's(1959) functional analysis of religious beliefprovides the grounds for this assumption. Heclaims that one of religious belief's centralpurposes is the setting of the boundaries ofhuman awareness with regard to the problemof being and not being.One conclusion that has emerged from theinvestigation of the relation between religiousbelief and fear of death is that active com-mitment to religious belief and practice tendsto reduce the intensity of manifest fear ofdeath (Feifel, 1977; Feifel & Nagy, 1981;Schulz, 1978;Templer, 1972b). Schulz relatesthis conclusion to the religious person's beliefin the hereafter. This explanation is consis-tent with Freud's (1961) claim that religiousbelief derives its strong hold on human think-ing and feeling because its promise of im-mortality providesman witha defense againstthe fear of death. However, because most ofthe studies that Schulz (1978) summarizedused relatively coarse unidimensional mea-sures of both fear of death and religious be-lief, they do not provide convincing evidenceof the defensive nature of religious belief,Hoelter's (1979) construction and partial

validation of a multidimensional fear-of-deathscale is one study of fear of death carried outfrom an explicitlymultidimensional point ofview. The present investigation differed fromHoelter's in two significant respects. Thepresent study's construction of personal-death-scale items was motivated by a rela-tively clear-cut descriptive theory of thestructure of fear of personal death, whereasHoelter's study wasatheoretical. Thus, Hoel-ter included in his scale items referring tofear of general death and dying along withitems referring to fear of personal death. Airthough Hoelter failed to specify the religiouscomposition of his sample, because it wasmade up of students at an American univer-sity, it wasprobably made up of persons whowere, at least nominally, Christian. The pres-ent study investigated the relation betweendimensions of fear of personal death and re-ligious belief and practice in a sample of Jew-ish Israelis. Despite these differences, a num-ber of Hoelter's factors are similar to the as-pects of fear of personal death postulated bythe present study.

Spilka, Stout, Minton, and Sizemore (1977)also showed that attitudes toward personalmortality and these attitudes' relation to re-ligious belief are multidimensional. However,their orientation seems mainly appropriatefor the multidimensional study of death per-spectives and religion in a population of per-sons already relatively committed to a spe-cific system of belief. Thus, although theywere guided by some of the same theoreticaland empirical studies referred to by the pres-ent investigation in designing their multidi-mensional measure of death perspectives,their orientation is more valuative than themodel of the present investigation. They ar-gue that "particularly within Christianity, thesalience of Intrinsic faith will have fostered,if not required, the internalization of deathas a transition to a better existence, namelyan Afterlife of Reward" (p. 170). They con-clude that multidimensional measures ofdeath perspectives should include scales de-signed to tap positive as well as negative at-titudes toward death.The multidimensional analysis of the gen-eral association between these phenomena ina population that includes nonreligious per-sons and religious adherents of a non-Chris-


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602 VICTOR FLORIAN AND SHLOMO KRAVETZtian faith may require a theoretical: modelthat is more descriptive than valuative. Thepossibility that certain individuals cope withdeath in a positive fashion does not neces-sarily mean that they perceive death as a pos-itive state of affairs. A descriptive study of themeanings that individuals attribute to theawareness of their death could providean ini-tial general understanding of the nature ofthis awareness. Once such an understandingis achieved, it can serve as the backgroundagainst which the contribution of specificbelief systems to their adherents' attitudestoward death can be viewed. The predomi-nant view that individuals tend to fear theirdeath could serve as the appropriate startingpoint for such a study. In addition, the pos-sibility that this fear is expressed in terms ofthe intrapersonal, interpersonal, and trans-personal consequences of death is a reason-able structural hypothesis. The present in-vestigation attempted to ascertain whether adescriptive multidimensional measure ofconscious fear of personal death differentiatesbetween religious persons and nonreligiouspersons along these facets of this phenome-non to the same extent and in the same di-rection.

MethodSub jec t s

On the basis of past investigations of the fear of death,physical and psychological well-being, age, sex, and ed-ucational level were taken into consideration when theresearch population was denned and the research sampleselected. Thus, the research sample included 178phys-ically and psychologically normal males whose agesranged from 18 years to 30 years, with a mean age of21.5 years. It was composed of an approximately equalnumber of university students, yeshivah (orthodox Jew-ish religious schools) students, and military cadets. Thisinvestigation was carried out in Israel, and all subjectswere Israeli Jews.Ins t rumen t s

For the purpose of this research, a scale was con-structed to measure the attribution of fear of personaldeath to the various consequences of death. Past empir-ical and theoretical research guided the formulation ofan initial pool of items. In addition, SO university social-science students were asked to list reasons for their fearof death, As a consequence of these processes, SO itemswere formulated and presented to a panel of three psy-chologists, who judged whether each item met the re-quirements of this study's theoretical model. For this

task, a fear-of-personal-death item wasdefined as an itemthat refers to conscious fear of death that is attributedto the intrapersonal, interpersonal, or transpersonal con-sequences of death. There was complete agreementamong the judges on 39 items. Theseitemswere retainedfor the preliminary scale, whichwasadministered to 145university students as part of the process of scale con-struction.Seven response categories were used with each item.These seven categories ranged from "Totally correct forme," which received a weight of one, to "Totally incor-rect for me," which received a weight of seven. Therefore,a low item score was indicative of a high degree of at-tribution of fear of personal death, whereas a high itemscore was indicative of a low degree of attribution of fearof personal death.These 145 students' responses to the 39 items weresubjected to item and factor analysis. As a consequenceof these analyses, one item was dropped and a smallnumber of items were reformulated,Toobtain estimatesof the test-retest reliabilities of the remaining items, the38-item scale was administered twice to an additionalsample of 42 university students, with a 6-week intervalbetween the two administrations. Only items with reli-abilities of .50 or higher were retained for the final scale.Consequently, the final scale consisted of 31 items withtest-retest reliabilities that ranged from .50 to .91.In addition to the Fear of Personal Death Scale, whichwas constructed especially for the present investigation,a demographic questionnaire was prepared. This ques-tionnaire was made up of items related to variables thatpast research had shown to be relevant to fear of personaldeath. It included questions pertaining to the subjects'age, sex, family status, place of birth, educational back-ground, physical health, and extent ofactual contact withdeath.Extent of Jewish religious belief and practice was mea-sured by the Jewish Religiosity Index (JRI) developed byBen-Meir and Kedem (1979). This index contains a 20-item Guttman scale of Jewish practice and a 6-itemGuttman scale of Jewish belief.The reproducibility coef-ficients of these scales were .90 for the scale of Jewishpractice and .93 for the scale of Jewish belief. The presentstudy dropped one item from each of the scales. Anexamination of the reproducibility of the two modifiedscales that was carried out on this study's sample re-vealed a reproducibility coefficient of .94 and a minimalmarginal reproducibility of .79 for the Jewish practicescale and a reproducibility coefficient of .89 and a min-imal marginal reproducibility coefficient of .72 for theJewish belief scale.Structural analyses of Christian subjects' self-reportsregarding the extent of their religious belief and practicehave been consistent with the claim that a multidimen-sional structure underlies this belief and practice andthat belief is more central to this structure than practice(Spilka et al., 1977). However, surveys of Jewish beliefand practice have shown religious practice to be the prin-cipal dimension of Jewish religious commitment (Krausz& Bar-Lev, 1978; Rosen, 1958). Furthermore, the Reli-gious Practice scale and the Religious Belief scale of theJRI were highlycorrelated (r = .82). Therefore, the pres-ent study used the Religious Practice scale to measuredegree of religious commitment.


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FEAR OF PERSONAL DEATH 603A number of Thematic Apperception lest (TAT) cardswere administered to the subjects as pan of an additionalstudy the results of which will be reported elsewhere.

ProcedureAfter the Fear of Personal Death Scale was con-structed, the four research measures were administeredto nine groups of subjects. Each of these groups con-tained from 20 to 30 persons. The research measureswere administered in the following order: (a) the de-mographic questionnaire, (b) the Jewish Religiosity In-dex, (c) the four TAT cards in the form of projectedslides, and (d) the Fear of Personal Death Scale.Before the measures were administered, the subjectswere told that they were taking part in a study of personalopinion. Only two of the 252 subjects who were askedto participate in the study refused to participate, Anadditional three subjects failed to complete all of thequestionnaires. Another subject was not included in theanalyses because he selected the same response category(Category 7: "Totally incorrect for me") for all ques-tionnaire items. A full explanation of the study's purposewas provided after the final scale was filled out and col-lected. Because the groups selected to participate in thisstudy contained few women and because studies of therelation between sex differences and fear of death havebeen inconclusive, the questionnaires of 68 female sub-jects were not included in the analysis of the data. Thus,the final analysis of the responses to the questionnaireswere carried out on a sample of 178 men.Results

This study hypothesized that individualsattribute their fear of death to the intraper-sonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal con-sequences of death. To examine whether therelations between the Fear of Personal DeathScale items could be accounted for by thishypothesized structure, a principal-compo-nents factor analysis was carried out on thetotal research sample's responses to the scale.Six factors with eigenvalues equal to one ormore were produced by this analysis. Thesefactors explained 67.9% of the total interitemvariance.Table 1 presents the factor structure aftervarimax orthogonal rotation to simple struc-ture. Orthogonal rotation was employed be-cause of this technique's relative simplicityand practicality and because of the clarity ofthe solutions that it produces (Nunnally,1978). Items with factor loadings of .45 ormore on a particular factor are considereddefinitive of that factor. To facilitate inter-pretation, such items have been grouped to-gether, and the factors have been listed ac-

cording to the percentage of the total inter-item variance accounted for by each factor.Factor loadings for the 10 items that definethe first factor range from .54 io .81. Theseitems refer to such consequences of death asthe cessation of creative activity (Item 1) andthe loss of life's pleasures (Item 10). This fac-tor seems to express fear of the loss of op-portunities for various forms of self-fulfill-ment (Loss of Self-Fulfillment factor). Eightitems with factor loadings that range from.56 to .82 define the second factor. Three ofthe four items with the highest factor loadingson this factor express the fear of the loss ofsocial presence and identity (Item 11, "Noneof those who remain alive will feel my ab-sence"; Item 13, "I will be forgotten by mysurvivors"; and Item 14, "My loss will nothurt those who are close to me"). The fiveremaining items could be interpreted as ei-ther indirect or metaphorical expressions ofthis fear (e.g., Item 16, "Life will go on with-out me," and Item 17, "The loss of humanlikeness"). This factor appears to measure thefear of the loss of social identity (Loss of So-cial Identity factor). The common theme ofthe four items with factor loadings that rangefrom .50 to .86 on the third factor seems tobe concern for the sorrow and loss that anindividual's death might cause family andfriends (Consequences to Family and Friendsfactor). The four items with factor loadingsthat range from .56 to .73 on the fourth factorseem to involve concern about the uncer-tainty and ambiguity of the state of personalexistence after death (Transcendental Con-sequences factor). The fifth factor consists offour items with factor loadings that rangefrom .45 to .64. These items pertain to thefear of the state of physical and personal dis-integration and annihilation associated withdeath (Self-Annihilation factor). The sixthfactor isdefined by a single item with a factorloading of .59. This item refers to the fear ofpunishment in the hereafter (Punishment inthe Hereafter factor).

The above factor matrix partially supportsthis study's multidimensional model of fearof personal death. The first and fifth factorsmight be considered reflections of differentaspects of the intrapersonal consequences ofdeath. The second and third factors could berelated to the fear of the interpersonal con-


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604 VICTOR FLORIAN AND SHLOMO KRAVETZsequences of death, whereas the fourth andfifth factors may be different reflections of thetranspersonal consequences of death.The mean and standard deviation for thesubjects' responses to the JRI were 25.6 and5.7, respectively. Because the possible scoreson this scale range from a low religiosity scoreof 19 to a high religiosity score of 38, theobtained mean and standard deviation indi-cate that the religious population may havebeen slightly overrepresented in the sample.To assure representation for the relativelysizable number of moderately religious per-sons in the sample, the analysis of the relationbetween religious practice and fear of per-sonal death was carried out after the totalresearch sample was broken up into threegroups according to the scores on the JRI.

Subjects whose scores on this scale were inthe upper third of the distribution were iden-tified as belonging to the religious group ( =65). Subjects whose scores on this religious-activity scale were in the lower third of thedistribution were identified as belonging tothe nonreligious group (n - 55). The re-maining subjects whose scores were in themiddle third of the distribution were iden-tified asbelonging to the moderately religiousgroup (n = 58).A two-way analysis of variance with re-peated measures on one variable was carriedout on the fear-of-personal-death standard-ized factor scores to compare the three re-search groups on the six fear-of-personal-death factors. Because of missing data, onesubject's factor scores could not be calcu-

Table 1Factor Matrix o f the Fear o f Per sona l Death Sca l e f or the Total Resear ch S am p l eFactors

Item1. Cessation of creative activities2. Cessation of all plans and activities3. Cessation of all spiritual activities4. Cessation of the ability to think5. My life will not have been exploited6. Severance from life itself7. Missing future events8. Necessity of realizing life goals9. Severance of ties with loved ones10. Loss of life's pleasures11. Absence will not be felt12. Events will take place without me13. I will be forgotten

14. My loss will not hurt close ones15. Burial deep in the earth16. Life will go on without me17. Loss of human semblance18. Fate of the body19. My family will still need me20. Relatives will not overcome sorrow21 . Sorrow to relatives and friends22. Inability to provide for family23. Uncertainty of what to expect24. Uncertainty of existence after death25. Its mysteriousness26. Unknown associated with it27. Decomposition of the body28. Loss and destruction of self29. State of everlasting sleep30. Destruction of personality31. Punishment in the hereafter

1.81.72.69.68.67.62.60.57.55.54.09.29.17.08.05.30.34.10.22.12.18.21.15.16.26.22.07.30.23.43.10

2.08.12.09.15.26.36.37.10.17.22.82.74.71.67.64.62.56.56.11.11.04.16.39.39.14.08.35.16.30.21.05

3.19.11.12.19.18.09.18.15.36.22.14.02.10.18.06.03.12.07.86.79.77.50.06.06.16.20.08.11.08.03.13

4.09.11.08.26.12.31.14.00.22.16.16.08.15.05.27.10.28.24.03.06.13.06.73.70.69.56.10.29.22.24-.05

5.20.18.09.28-.07.10.07.14

.2 2.17.09.23.20.01.32.19.10.51.03.12.07.04.17.13.35.44.64.60.49.45.07

6.08.19.03-.19.34-.27-.19.19-.21-.43.07-.03.12-.02-.04-.03-.14.14.00.04.11.11-.12-.11.09.00.09-.04.06-.21.59

Note. Items are completions of the statement, "Death frightens me because .


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FEAR OF PERSONAL DEATH 605

Table 2M e a n F a c t o r S c o r e s f o r t h e T h r e e ResearchGro up s o n t h e S i x Fear -o f -Per sonal -Dea th F a c to r sFactor

GroupReligiousModerately religiousNonreligious

Total

Loss ofSelf-Fulfillment

.042.065-.069

.012

Loss ofSocialIdentity.176-.185-.010.003

Consequencesto Familyand Friends'-.068-.164.239-.004

Trans-cendentalConse-quences

.076.034-.126-.003

Self-Anni-hilation".215-.164-.102

-.001

Punishmentin theHereafter1'-.520.228.319-.013

Total-.016-.028.042

.003Note. Lower scores represent higher degrees of fear of death.* Ex post facto Schefle analysis indicated a statistically significant difference at the .05 probability level between themoderately religious group and the nonreligious group on this factor.b Ex post facto Schefle analysis indicated a statistically significant difference at the .05 probability level between thereligious group and the remaining two research groups on this factor.

lated. Therefore,this subject's responses werenot included in this analysis. Table 2 presentsthe standardized factor-score means for thethree research groups and total research sam-ple on the six fear-of-personal-death factors.As is evident from this table, there were nostatistically significant differences betweenthe six factors, F(5, 870) = .02, p > .05, andthere were no statistically significant differ-ences between the three groups, F(2, 174) =.53, p > .05. However, a statistically signifi-cant interaction between the research groupsand the personal-fear-of-death factors wasuncovered,F(10,870) = 5.18,.p < .001. Table2 indicates the possible sources of this inter-action. The extent and direction of the dif-ferences between the research groups variedacross the six fear-of-personal-death factors.An ex post facto Schefffc analysis was per-formed to determine the specific nature ofthese differences. This analysis revealed sta-tistically significant differences between thethree groups.on the Punishment in the Here-after factor, the Self-Annihilation Factor, andthe Consequences to Family and Friends Fac-tor, The religious group received the highestfactor scores on Punishment in the Hereafterand the lowest factor scores on Self-Annihi-lation when compared to the two remainingresearch groups. On these two factors, themoderately religiousand nonreligious groupsdid not differ significantly from each other.On the Consequences to Family and Friendsfactor, the moderately religious group re-

ceived the highest factor scores and the non-religious group received the lowest factorscores. The religious group's Consequencesto Family and Friends factor scores fell be-tween these two extremes.Discussion

fAn examination of the results of the anal-ysis of the total sample's responses to the Fearof Personal Death Scale seems to confirm, atleast partially, this study's multidimensionalmodel of the meanings that individuals at-tribute to their fear of death. The six factorsthat emerged from the principal-componentsfactor analysis of the total research sample'sresponses to the Fear ofPersonal Death Scaleapproximate the three aspects of fear of per-sonal death posited by this investigation'smodel. Fear of loss of self-fulfillment and self-annihilation correspond to this model's hy-pothesized intrapersonal aspect of fear ofper-sonal death. Fear of consequences to familyand friends and of loss of social identity par-allel the interpersonal aspects of this model.Fear of the unknown and of punishment inthe hereafter appear to reflect the transper-sonal aspect of fear of personal death. Onemajor difference between the hypothesizedmodel and the factor analysis results is thateach of the model's postulated aspects of fearof personal death is expressed by two factors,one active and the other passive.Certain of this study's six fear-of-personal-


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606 VICTOR FLORIAN AND SHLOMO KRAVETZdeath factors are also similar to five of theeight fear-of-death factors uncovered byHoelter (1979). Because of the atheoreticalnature of Hoelter's study, certain of his fac-tors combine aspects of fear of death in gen-eral with aspects of fear of personal death.On the one hand, the present investigation'sreplication of a number of the major aspectsof Hoelter's multidimensional analysis of fearof death could be considered a demonstrationof the generality of this study's postulatedstructure of fear of personal death. On theother hand, this study's theoretical approachseems to have uncovered a more precise fac-tor structure for fear of personal death thandid Hoelter's atheoretical approach.The present study's factors differ from thepositive-negative higher order dimensionpostulated and uncovered by Spilka et al.(1977) from their multidimensional analysisof the relation between death perspectivesand types of Christian religious belief. Ac-tive-passive factors may be more suitable fordifferentiating religious persons from non-religious persons, whereas a positive-nega-tive dimension may be more sensitive to dis-tinctions between persons who profess a sim-ilar formal religious affiliation. Furthermore,activity-passivity may be particularly salientfor the Jewish religion with its relativelystrong emphasis on ritual and ceremony andits relativelyweak emphasis on faith and per-sonal salvation (Kaufman, 1972). Obviously,the above interpretations require furthercomparative research for their confirmation.

In general, the quantitative differences be-tween the three research groups on specificfear-of-personal-death factors were in keepingwith what one might expect on the basis ofthese groups' different belief systems. Thereligious group attributed significantly morefear to punishment in the hereafter and sig-nificantly less fear to self-annihilation thanthe less religious groups. Because one aspectof being an observant Jew (Epstein, 1960) isbelieving in one's immortal accountability,this finding is understandable. However, thefinding that the moderately religious groupexpressed significantly more fear of death'sconsequences to family and friends than theother twogroups is not as readily understand-able. The moderately religious Jew maytransfer active involvement with the ambig-

uous transpersonal aspect of personal deathto the more clear-cut interpersonal aspect ofthis phenomenon. Thus, an important aspectof religious belief and observance may be thepower that religion has to extend temporallythe active involvement with life and life'sobligations.Past research into the relation between re-ligious belief and fear of death has generallysought empirical evidence for a theoreticallyand intuitively appealing direct associationbetween these two complex phenomena. Theresult of such research has sometimes beenconsidered too confusing to warrant rationalanalysis (Pollack, 1979-1980). The presentinvestigation suggests that thisconfusion mayhave resulted from the use of unidimensionalmeasures of fear of death and relativelycoarse measures of religiosity. Fear of per-sonal death appears to be characterizable interms of general categories related to the in-trapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonalconsequences ofdeath. The present and otherstudies (Feifel & Nagy, 1981; Hoelter, 1979)have shown that the emphasis that these cat-egories receive when individuals attribute thefear of their death is a correlate of the natureof these individuals' religious commitment.However, this relation between different as-pects of fear of personal death and extent ofreligious belief and practice may not bemonotonic and may differ across differentreligious belief systems. Research that ismore comprehensive and cross-cultural isnecessary to test both the generalizability andthe validity of this interpretation.

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