Conferenza del Prof. Jamin Halberstadt

Aula DPSS 1 dalle 14 alle 15.30

09.10.2014

Prof. Jamin Halberstadt, Department of Psychology, University of Otago

Abstract:

The claims that fear of death motivates religious belief, and that belief assuages such fear, feature prominently in historical and contemporary theories of religion. However, the evidence for these claims, both correlational and experimental, is ambivalent, in part due to uncertainty about the meanings of  "belief" and "fear", as well as a failure to consider both conscious and unconscious cognition.   In this talk I present the results of recent studies on the effect of death anxiety on acute explicit and implicit religious belief, as well as the effectiveness of belief in ameliorating both explicit and implicit anxiety. Initial studies suggest dual and complementary processes: ostensibly nonreligious individuals report greater explicit disbelief, but also greater implicit belief, when experiencing death anxiety. I argue that this discrepancy permits these participants to enjoy worldview defense while implicitly allowing for the immortality that supernatural agents afford.