This review summarises research on the relationship between death anxiety and religiosity. The fear of death is commonly hypothesized as a motivation for religious belief. From a Terror Management Theory perspective, religious beliefs are especially attractive because they offer both literal and symbolic immortality in the form of afterlife beliefs and belonging in venerable systems of value respectively. However, the evidence for any relationship - whether correlational or causal - between death anxiety and religious belief is weak. Indeed, evidence for death anxiety under normal (i.e. non-life threatening) circumstances is surprisingly hard to find. If the fear of death motivates religiosity, it does so subtly, weakly, and sporadically.

中文翻译：

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死亡焦虑与宗教

本综述总结了死亡焦虑与宗教信仰之间关系的研究。对死亡的恐惧通常被假设为宗教信仰的动机。从恐怖管理理论的角度来看，宗教信仰特别有吸引力，因为它们分别以来世信仰的形式提供了字面和象征性的不朽，并分别归属于古老的价值体系。然而，关于死亡焦虑和宗教信仰之间的任何关系——无论是相关性还是因果关系——的证据都很薄弱。事实上，在正常（即非危及生命）情况下死亡焦虑的证据出奇地难以找到。如果对死亡的恐惧激发了宗教信仰，那么它的作用是微妙、微弱和零星的。