Fear of Death and Supernatural Beliefs: Developing A New Supernatural Belief Scale to Test the Relationship

Abstract

Fear of death features in both historical and contemporary theories of religion, but the relationship between death anxiety and religious belief is still ambiguous, largely due to the use of inappropriate or imprecise measures. The current studies therefore aimed to develop a valid, targeted measure of respondents’ tendency towards religious belief, the ‘Supernatural Belief Scale’ (SBS), and to use the SBS to examine the relation between death anxiety and religious belief. Results indicate that the SBS shows high reliability and convergent validity and that its relation to death anxiety depends on participants’ religious identification: ‘religious’ participants fear death less the stronger their religious beliefs, whereas ‘non–religious’ participants are more inclined towards religious belief the more they fear death. These studies contribute a new measurement tool for research on religious belief and provide a starting point for an experimental integration of discrepant research findings. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology

Keywords

personality scales and inventories religion tests

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Akaike

(1987). Factor analysis and AIC. Psychometrika, 52, 317–332.

Allport

G. W.

(1950). The individual and his religion. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.

Altemeyer

, & Hunsberger

(1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113–133.

Alvarado

K. A.

, Templer

D. I.

, Bresler

, & Thomas–Dobson

(1995). The relationship of religious variables to death depression and death anxiety. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 202–204.

Atran

(2002). In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bacon

D. R.

, Sauer

P. L.

, & Young

(1995). Composite reliability in structural equation modeling. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55, 394–406.

Barnette

J. J.

(2000). Effects of stem and Likert response option reversals on survey internal consistency: If you feel the need, there is a better alternative to using those negatively worded stems. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 60, 361–370.

Barrett

J. L.

(2004). Why would anyone believe in God? Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press.

Barrett

J. L.

(2007). Cognitive science of religion: What is it and why is it? Religion Compass, 1, 768–786.

10.

Barrett

(2007). Structural equation modeling: Adjudging model fit. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 815–824.

11.

Benson

P. L.

, & Spilka

(1973). God image as a function of self–esteem and locus of control. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 13, 297–310.

12.

Bentler

P. M.

(1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural equation models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238–246.

13.

Bentler

P. M.

(2005). EQS 6 structural equations program manual. Encino: Multivariate Software.

14.

Bentler

P. M.

, & Bonett

D. G.

(1980). Significance tests and goodness of fit in the analysis of covariance structures. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 588–606.

15.

Bering

(2010). The God instinct: the psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life. London: Nicholas Brealey.

16.

Bloom

(2004). Descartes’ baby: how the science of child development explains what makes us human. New York: Basic Books.

17.

Bollen

K. A.

(1989). Structural equations with latent variables. New York: Wiley.

18.

Boyer

(2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.

19.

Brown

T. A.

(2006). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. New York: Guilford Press.

20.

Browne

M. W.

, & Cudeck

(1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Bollen

K. A.

, & Long

J. S.

(Eds), Testing structural equation models (pp. 136–162). Beverly Hills: Sage.

21.

Burling

J. W.

(1993). Death concerns and symbolic aspects of the self: The effects of mortality salience on status concern and religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 100–105.

22.

Byrne

B. M.

(1998). Structural equation modeling with LISREL, PRELIS and SIMPLIS: basic concepts, applications and programming. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

23.

Byrne

(2004). Testing for multigroup invariance using AMOS graphics: A road less traveled. Structural Equation Modeling, 11, 272–300.

24.

Cattell

R. B.

(1966). The scree test for the number of factors. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 1, 245–276.

25.

Chen

, Curran

P. J.

, Bollen

K. A.

, Kirby

, & Paxton

(2008). An empirical evaluation of the use of fixed cutoff points in RMSEA test statistic in structural equation models. Sociological Methods and Research, 36, 462–494.

26.

Chou

C.–P.

, Bentler

P. M.

, & Satorra

(1991). Scaled test statistics and robust standard errors for nonnormal data in covariance structure analysis. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 44, 347–357.

27.

Cohen

A. B.

, Pierce

J. D.

, Chambers

, Meade

, Gorvine

B. J.

, & Koenig

H. G.

(2005). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, belief in the afterlife, death anxiety, and life satisfaction in young Catholics and Protestants. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 307–324.

28.

Conte

H. R.

, Weiner

M. B.

, & Plutchik

(1982). Measuring death anxiety: conceptual, psychometric, and factor–analytic aspects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 775–785.

29.

Crawford

J. R.

, & Henry

J. D.

(2004). The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS): Construct validity, measurement properties and normative data in a large non–clinical sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 43, 245–265.

30.

Curran

P. J.

, West

S. G.

, & Finch

J. F.

(1996). The robustness of test statistics to nonnormality and specification error in confirmatory factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 1, 16–29.

31.

Dezutter

, Luyckx

, & Hutsebaut

(2009). “Are you afraid to die?” Religion and death attitudes in an adolescent sample. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 37, 163–173.

32.

Dickstein

L. S.

(1972). Death concern: Measurement and correlated. Psychological Reports, 20, 1181–1182.

33.

Donovan

J. M.

(1994). Defining religion: Death and anxiety in an Afro–Brazilian cult. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Tulane University, New Orleans, USA.

34.

Donovan

J. M.

(2002). Implicit religion and the curvilinear relationship between religion and death anxiety: A review study. Implicit Religion, 5, 17–28.

35.

Donovan

J. M.

(2003). Defining religion. In Glazier

S. D.

, & Flowerday

C. A.

(Eds), Selected readings in the anthropology of religion (pp. 61–98). Westport: Praeger.

36.

Durkheim

(1912). The elementary forms of the religious life, a study in religious sociology. New York: Macmillan.

37.

Fan

, & Sivo

S. A.

(2005). Sensitivity of fit indexes to misspecified structural or measurement model components: Rationale of two–index strategy revisited. Structural Equation Modeling, 12, 343–367.

38.

Feuerbach

(2004). The essence of religion. (A. Loos, Trans.). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Original work published 1846).

39.

Fornell

, & Larcker

D. F.

(1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18, 39–50.

40.

Freud

(1961). The future of an illusion (J. Strachey, Trans., Ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1927).

41.

Fullerton

J. T.

, & Hunsberger

(1982). A unidimensional measure of Christian orthodoxy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 21, 317–326.

42.

Gerbing

D. W.

, & Anderson

J. C.

(1984). On the meaning of within–factor correlated measurement errors. Journal of Consumer Research, 11(1), 572–580.

43.

Goffin

R. D.

(2007). Assessing the adequacy of structural equation models: Golden rules and editorial policies. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 831–839.

44.

Gorsuch

R. L.

(1983). Factor analysis (2nd Ed.). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

45.

Gorsuch

R. L.

(1984). Measurement: The boon and bane of investigating religion. American Psychologist, 39, 228–236.

46.

Guthrie

S. E.

(1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

47.

Harding

S. R.

, Flannelly

K. J.

, Weaver

A. J.

, & Costa

K. G.

(2005). The influence of religion on death anxiety and death acceptance. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 8, 253–261.

48.

Hill

P. C.

(2005). Measurement in the psychology of religion and spirituality. In Paloutzian

R. F.

, & Park

C. L.

(Eds), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 43–61). New York: Guilford Press.

49.

Hill

P. C.

, & Hood

R. W.

(1999). Measures of religiosity. Birmingham: Religious Education Press.

50.

Holland

J. C.

, Kash

K. M.

, Passik

, Gronert

M. K.

, Sison

, Lederberg

,… Fox

, (1998). A brief spiritual beliefs inventory for use in quality of life research in life–threatening illness. Psycho–Oncology, 7, 460–469.

51.

Hood

R. W.

, Hill

R. C.

, & Spilka

(2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. New York: The Guilford Press.

52.

Hopwood

C. J.

, & Donnellan

M. B.

(2010). How should the internal structure of personality inventories be evaluated? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 332–346.

53.

Horn

(1965). A rationale and test for the number of factors in factor analysis. Psychometrika, 30, 179–185.

54.

, & Bentler

P. M.

(1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1–55.

55.

Hume

(2008). Dialogues and natural history of religion. Gaskin

J. C. A.

(Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1757).

56.

Jackson

D. L.

, Gillaspy

J. A.

Jr. , & Purc–Stephenson

(2009). Reporting practices in confirmatory factor analysis: An overview and some recommendations. Psychological Methods, 14, 6–23.

57.

Jong

, Halberstadt

, & Bluemke

(2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.03.005

58.

Jöreskog

K. G.

, & Sörbom

(1986). LISREL IV: Analysis of linear structural relationships by maximum likelihood (4th Ed.). Morrissville, IN: Scientific Software International Inc.

59.

Kay

A. C.

, Moscovitch

D. A.

, & Laurin

(2010). Randomness, attributions of arousal and belief in God. Psychological Science, 21, 216–218.

60.

Kim

K. H.

(2005). The relation among fit indexes, power, and sample size in structural equation modeling. Structural Equation Modeling, 12, 368–390.

61.

Knight

R. G.

, Chisholm

B. J.

, Marsh

N. V.

, & Godfrey

H. P.

(1988). Some normative, reliability, and factor analytic data for the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44, 203–206.

62.

Lawson

E. T.

(2000). Towards a cognitive science of religion. Numen, 47, 338–349.

63.

Leming

M. R.

(1979-1980). Religion and death: A test of Homans’ thesis. Omega, 10, 347–364.

64.

MacCallum

R. C.

, Browne

M. W.

, & Sugawara

H. M.

(1996). Power analysis and determination of sample size for covariance structure modeling. Psychological Methods, 1(2), 130–149.

65.

MacCallum

R. C.

, Widaman

K. F.

, Preacher

, & Hong

(2001). Sample size in factor analysis: The role of model error. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 36, 611–637.

66.

Malinowski

(1948). Magic, science and religion and other essays. Garden City: Doubleday.

67.

Marsh

H. W.

(1996). Positive and negative global self–esteem: A substantively meaningful distinction or artifactors? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 810–819.

68.

Marsh

H. W.

, Hau

K.–T.

, & Wen

(2004). In search of golden rules: Comment on hypothesis–testing approaches to setting cutoff values for fit indexes and dangers of overgeneralizing Hu and Bentler's (1999) findings. Structural Equation Modeling, 11, 320–341.

69.

Marx

(1970). Critique of Hegel's philosophy of right ( Jolin

, & O'Malley

Eds. & Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1843).

70.

McConahay

J. B.

, & Hough

J. C.

Jr. (1973). Love and guilt–oriented dimensions of Christian belief. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 12, 53–64.

71.

McDonald

R. P.

(2010). Structural models and the art of approximation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(6), 675–686.

72.

Motl

R. W.

, & DiStefano

(2002). Longitudinal invariance of self–esteem and method effects associated with negatively worded items. Structural Equation Modeling, 9, 562–578.

73.

Norenzayan

, & Hansen

I. G.

(2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174–187.

74.

Osarchuk

, & Tatz

M. S.

(1973). Effect of induced fear of death on belief in afterlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 256–260.

75.

Podsakoff

P. M.

, MacKenzie

S. B.

, Lee

J. Y.

, & Podsakoff

N. P.

(2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 879–903.

76.

Pyysiäinen

(2009). Supernatural agents: why we believe in souls, gods, and buddhas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

77.

Raykov

, & Shrout

P. E.

(2002). Reliability of scales with general structure: Point and interval estimation using a structural equation modeling approach. Structural Equation Modeling, 9, 195–212.

78.

Reise

S. P.

, Widaman

K. F.

, & Pugh

R. H.

(1993). Confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory: Two approaches for exploring measurement invariance. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 552–566.

79.

Revelle

, & Zinbarg

(2009). Coefficients Alpha, Beta, Omega, and the glb: Comments on Sijtsma. Psychometrika, 74, 145–154.

80.

Rosseel

(2011). Lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling and more (Version 0.4–10 beta). Retrieved from http://lavaan.org

81.

Schaler

J. A.

(1996). Spiritual thinking in addiction–treatment providers: The spiritual belief scale. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 14, 7–33.

82.

Schmitt

, & Kuljanin

(2008). Measurement invariance: Review of practice and implications. Human Resource Management Review, 18, 210–222.

83.

Schweizer

(2012). On correlated errors. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 28, 1–2.

84.

Sivo

S. A.

, Fan

, Witta

E. L.

, & Willse

(2006). The search for “optimal” cutoff properties: Fit index criteria in structural equation modeling. The Journal of Experimental Education, 74: 267–288.

85.

Steiger

J. H.

(2000). Point estimation, hypothesis testing, and interval estimation using the RMSEA: Some comments and a reply to Hayduk and Gleser. Structural Equation Modeling, 7, 149–162.

86.

Steiger

J. H.

(2007). Understanding the limitations of global fit assessment in structural equation modeling. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 893–898.

87.

Tabachnick

B. G.

, & Fidell

L. S.

(2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th Ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

88.

Templer

D. I.

(1970). The construction and validation of a death anxiety scale. The Journal of General Psychology, 82, 165–177.

89.

Tremlin

(2006). Minds and gods: The cognitive foundations of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

90.

Vail

K. E.

III , Rothschild

Z. K.

, Weise

D. R.

, Solomon

, Pyszczynski

, & Greenberg

(2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84–94.

91.

Vandenberg

R. J.

, & Lance

C. E.

(2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 4–70.

92.

Velicer

W. F.

(1976). Determining the number of components from the matrix of partial correlations. Psychometrika, 41, 321–327.

93.

Weisbuch

, Seery

, & Blascovich

(2005). On atheists in foxholes: Religious beliefs and death. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Santa Barbara.

94.

Whitehouse

(2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

95.

Willer

(2009). No atheists in foxholes: Motivated reasoning and religious belief. In Jost

J. T.

, Kay

A. C.

, & Thorisdottir

(Eds), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 241–264). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

96.

Wilson

D. S.

(2002). Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

97.

Wink

, & Scott

(2005). Does religiousness buffer against the dear of death and dying in late adulthood? Findings from a longitudinal study. Journal of Gerontology, 60B, 207–214.

98.

Woods

C. M.

(2006). Careless responding to reverse–worded items: Implications for confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 3, 189–194.

99.

Yuan

K.–H.

, & Bentler

P. M.

(1998). Normal theory based test statistics in structural equation modeling. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 51, 289–309.