Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness

Terror management theory argues that human understanding of mortality creates an existential anxiety that must be kept under constant control. Defenses—such as beliefs that provide permanence, predictability, and meaning—are erected whose function is in part to keep thoughts about death as far removed from consciousness as possible. The current study investigated the defensive function of Christian fundamentalist belief in managing death-awareness. The general hypothesis of the study is that challenges to such beliefs undermine one’s ability to control cognitions related to mortality. More specifically, it was hypothesized that successful challenges to this form of religious belief would make death-related cognitions more accessible to consciousness. Self-identified Christians, both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists, encountered material that challenged the fundamentalist belief that the Christian Bible is free of inconsistencies and contradictions. Consistent with expectations, under these conditions higher levels of accessibility of death-related cognition were found among fundamentalist Christians, but not their non-fundamentalist counterparts.