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Religiosity, Fear of Death and Suicide Acceptability
Author(s) -
Hoelter Jon W.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1943-278x.1979.tb00561.x
Subject(s) - religiosity , psychology , fear of death , clinical psychology , scale (ratio) , psychiatry , social psychology , physics , quantum mechanics
The present research was an attempt to test two hypotheses derived from a recently proposed social psychological model of suicide: The acceptability of suicide is a decreasing function of religiosity and fear of death. Questionnaire data were collected for 205 undergraduates at a midwestern university in 1978. The questionnaire included several measures of religiosity, a factor analytic multidimensional fear of death scale, and a suicide acceptability scale. Results, showing that all of the religiosity measures and certain types of fear of death were significantly related to the acceptability of suicide, supported the hypotheses under examination.