OMEGA, Vol. 7(3).

1976

PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH IN RELATION TO

POWERLESSNESS AND FORM OF
PERSONAL RELIGION

BARBARA MINTON
BERNARD SPILKA

University of Denver

ABSTRACT
Research on religion and death perspectives has resulted in many contradictory
findings. It was hypothesized that one reason for this situation stems from the
treatment of both domains as unidimensional. The present study examined the
pattern of relationships among multidimensional measures of religion and death
outlooks. The possible involvement of powerlessness as a confounding factor was
also evaluated. Utilizing religious respondents four forms of personal religion and
nine death perspectives were found to be complexly related. These associations
weakened when powerlessness was removed from the original matrix. Meaningful
correlational patterns among the variables were revealed.

Introduction
It has been argued that death created religion. This is implied in Becker’s
eloquent statement that “Religion solves the problem of death [l]. Full
transcendance of the human condition means limitless possibility unimaginable
to us” [ 1 , pp. 204-2051. Weisman further claims that “Religion recognizes
man’s yearning for survival and depends upon man’s inability to imagine
anything else” [2, p. 1011.
When we turn to the research on religious belief and behavior and outlooks
toward death, we find less unanimity of agreement.
Overviewing the entire research literature in this area, Lester noted that
every possible relationship between religiosity and death fear and anxiety had
sometime been reported [3, 41. He was forced to agree with Martin and
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262 / 6.M I N T O N A N D 6.SPILKA

Wrightsman that very serious methodological difficulties and weaknesses have

plagued this research [5].
Though not cited earlier, one of the possible confounding factors in work
on religion and death might stem from the fact that none of this research has
dealt with both domains multidimensionally even though some unimpressive
internal consistency reliability coefficients for the various measures employed
could imply such complexity [3]. The only attempts to deal with death
perspectives in such a multiform way, which utilized reasonably internally
consistent objective scales were carried out by Hooper and Spilka and Spilka,
Pellegrini and Dailey [ 6 , 71. Though it is the current feeling of the writers
that these measures do need additional development and refinement, they
seem to treat outlooks on death in the complex manner in which they should
be approached.
In every study relating death and religion, the latter variable has also been
assessed in a simplified, unitary way. For over a decade, however, evidence of
the multidimensionality of personal religion has been accumulating [7-91.
Solid objective measures of these various forms of faith have been developed
and successfully employed [lo-141. It was thus the purpose of the present
work to undertake in investigation of religion-death perspective relationships
when both realms were conceptualized and analyzed multidimensionally.
Hooper [15], in extending Murphy’s [I61 discussion of the meaning of
death, constructed nine, twenty item, Likert format scales to assess different
perspectives on death. These were designed to evaluate perceptions of death
as :
Natural End: Death as merely the natural conclusion to life, a terminal
point with nothing beyond it.
Pain: Death is seen in terms of loss of mastery and consciousness with the
prospect of pain and a violent end.
Loneliness: Death is pictured as separation from others, isolation and
abandonment.
Unknown: Life’s termination is viewed as mysterious, unfathomable,
ambiguous, undefined.
Punishment: Death is retribution for wrongdoing; the agent is fate or God.
Forsaking dependents: Guilt over leaving one’s dependents is stressed, but
envy toward the living is also present.
Failure: Death is personal failure, defeat, the ultimate in frustration and
helplessness.
A n Afterlife of Reward: Death leads to reward, justification, participation
in a benevolent eternity.
Courage: Death represents an opportunity to show one’s hope, faith and
strength, the final realization of one’s highest values.
These nine scales have been shown to order themselves along a positive-
 PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH I 263

negative dimension with death as natural end, pain, loneliness, unknown,

punishment, forsaking dependents and failure as constituting the unfavorable
end of this continuum. Courage and an afterlife-of-reward are found at the
positive end [ 6 ] .
The multiform nature of personal religion has been largely structured in
two major, overlapping dichotomies: Intrinsic-Extrinsic and Committed-
Consensual. The former was theorized and developed by Allport [17] and his
students [lo, 181, while the latter distinction derived from the work of Allen
and Spilka and Spilka and his associates [12, 201.
The Intrinsic-Extrinsic dichotomy respectively treats intrinsic religion as a
“faith that floods the whole life with motivation and meaning” [16, p. 2651,
while an extrinsic faith is instrumental and utilitarian. In contrast to this
affective-behavioral approach, Allen and Spilka studied Committed and Con-
.
sensual religious outlooks as primarily broad differences in cognitive style
[18]. In sum, Committed religion is cognitively open, abstract, flexible, and
complex as opposed to Consensual religion which tends to be closed, restric-
tive, rigid, detached and concrete.
Because of suggestions that another variable, powerlessness, might mediate
between the forms of personal religion and death perspectives, a highly
reliable measure of this orientation was included in the study. Previous work
has shown that powerlessness is associated positively with extrinsic religion
and negatively with Committed religion [12]. It has also been shown t o be a
major component in alienation and Siegman reported social alienation to be
positively affiliated with fear of death [21-241. If associations were to be
found between the death perspectives and forms of personal religion, the
potentially confounding effects of powerlessness might need to be partialled
out.
On the basis of the foregoing, the following hypotheses are offered.
1. Committed and Intrinsic forms of personal religion will correlate
positively with death perspectives that may be regarded as positive (e.g.,
an Afterlife of Reward and Courage).
2. Committed and Intrinsic forms of personal religion will correlate
negatively with death perspectives which may themselves be considered
negative (e.g., Natural End, Pain, Loneliness, Unknown, Punishment,
Forsaking Dependents, and Failure).
3. Consensual and Extrinsic forms of personal religion will relate positively
t o the unfavorable death outlooks mentioned in the second hypothesis
and negatively t o the favorable dispositions cited in the first hypothesis.
4. Powerlessness will be affiliated positively with both the negative death
perspectives and Consensual and Extrinsic types of personal faith. An
opposite pattern of relationships will obtain with the more favorable
death perspectives and Committed and Intrinsic personal religion.
264 I B. MINTON AND B. SPILKA

PARTICIPANTS

The participants were sixty-seven individuals ranging in age from seventeen

to eighty-three years (Mean age 30.0 years). Forty females and twenty-seven
males primarily from a church in Boise, Idaho participated, along with a few
religiously active college students. AU were Protestant.

TESTS AND MATERIALS

A test battery consisting of the nine twenty-item death perspective scales
discussed above, measures of Committed, Consensual, Intrinsic, and Extrinsic
religion and Powerlessness plus a general information sheet was constructed
and administered. Information was also gained on sex, age, religious affiliation
and church attendance. The Powerlessness instrument consists of seventeen
items and has been shown to be highly reliable and valid [12, 231.

PROCEDURE

AU participants were highly cooperative in taking the tests. A matrix of

Pearson Product-Moment correlation coefficients among all variables was
computed. An additional matrix of partial correlations was derived as Power-
lessness was removed from the original matrix.

Results and Discussion

Table 1 presents the initial and partial correlation matrices among the
variables discussed above. In four instances Committed and Consensual faith
correlated significantly with the death perspectives in the hypothesized
direction. Consensual religion ties to perceptions of death as Natural End (.24),
as Unknown (.24), and Failure (.24). In contrast, a Committed orientation is
affiliated with death regarded in terms of an Afterlife of Reward (.40).
Clouding this picture, however, is a pattern of relationships with Powerless-
ness. Committed faith is negatively correlated with these feelings (- .33), while
a Consensual outlook is independent of Powerlessness. Five of the death
perspective scales are positively tied to Powerlessness (Pain, Loneliness,
Unknown, Punishment and Failure), while an Afterlife of reward is negatively
afffiated with this variable.
When Powerlessness is partialled out, the various correlations tend to be
reduced in strength. Two of the three that had attained significance at the .05
level now drop below this cutoff. This shift is of dubious meaning since the
change in each coefficient is .01 and the origin4 correlations of .24 were on
the dividing line for the .05 level. The above noted relationships of Committed
 PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH I 265

Table 1. Original and First Order Partials Between Death Perspectives,

Personal Religion and Powerlessness (N = 67)
Personal religion

Death
Perspectives Committed Consensual intrinsic Extrinsic Powerlessness

Natural End 02a ( 08)' 24' ( 24)' -01 ( 02) 29' ( 25)' 16
Pain -18 (-03) 20 ( 19) -18 (-11) 37d ( 22) ad
Loneliness -01 ( 17) 05 ( 03) -12 (-05) 30' ( 14) Md
Unknown -04 ( 10) 24' ( 23) -03 ( 05) 47d ( 36)d 3gd
Punishment 02 ( 19) 08 ( 06) -03 ( 06) 30' ( 14) 43d
Forsaking De- 04 ( 11) 20 ( 19) 03 ( 07) 3Bd ( 30)' 20
pendents
Failure -10 ( 07) 24' ( 23) -17 (-10) 41d ( 25)' 48d
Afterlife of 40d ( 35Id -17 (-16) 23 ( 20) -37d (-32)d -22
Reward
Courage 16 ( 23) 11 ( 10) 16 ( 20) 21 ( 15) 18
Powerlessness -33d 07 -19 Md -
Decimal points omitted.
( pactial correlations with Powerlessness removed.
ZPp << .01.
.05.

religion with an Afterlife of Reward and Natural End with a Consensual faith
still remain.
None of the partial correlations between the death perspectives and
Intrinsic religion were statistically significant, while all of those with Extrinsic
religion are weakened and three drop below the .05 level (Pain, Loneliness,
and Punishment). Numerically some of the reductions that can be seen in
Table 1 are of fair magnitude, suggesting that Powerlessness may well be a
meaningful component in death perspective-religion associations.
Certain cautions ought to be noted when making inferences from the fore-
going observations. The religion measures, within each set of scales, tend to be
statistically independent of each other. Committed and Consensual forms
correlate - .05 with each other; Intrinsic and Extrinsic types relate - .19. The
Committed and Intrinsic scales and the Consensual and Extrinsic instruments
do share certain items, hence the former correlate .62, the latter .55. In
addition, the death perspective scales do associate with each other to a
moderate to strong degree with scale intercorrelations mainly in the .3 to .5
range. As noted by the writers, additional refinement of these measures is
called for, as in each succeeding study in which they have been employed, the
original null to low scale intercorrelations have tended to increase in strength.
In the present study, the pattern of relationships, statistically meaningful and
otherwise, must be viewed as, in part, reflecting the relationship patterns
among the death scales themselves and also across the religion instruments.
Taking into consideration the above cautions, it is still reasonable to claim
266 / B. MINTON AND B. SPILKA

some support for the hypotheses offered earlier. This must necessarily lead t o
the conclusion that research on religion and concerns regarding death may
have not only been defective in methodology as T-ester and Martin and
Wrightsman have so well contended, but this work has also been uniformed as
to the complexity of the domains themselves [3, 51. It is hoped that the
present work has convincingly demonstrated this last possibility.

Summary and Conclusions

Previous work on religion and death has treated both realms in a simplified
unitary manner. The research reported here introduces multidimensional con-
ceptions into these areas both conceptually and operationally. Sixty-seven
religiously active people were administered four measures of personal religious
orientations and nine instruments designed to assess different perspectives on
death. In addition, because of the possible involvement of Powerlessness as a
mediator between religion and views of death, an index of these feelings was
included in the analysis.
Support for the hypotheses was obtained. Committed religion is a correlate
of perceptions of death in terms of an Afterlife of reward, while Consensual
religion ties to negative outlooks on death as Natural End, Unknown and
Failure. Even though Intrinsic faith fails to relate to any of the death perspec-
tives an Extrinsic religious orientation tied to eight of the nine death
perspective scales in the theorized direction.
Powerlessness also affiliates with both the religion and death perspective
measures as expected and when statistically partialled out of the religion-death
associations, many of these, though weakened, still attain statistical significance.
The desirability, if not necessity, of treating both religion and death perspec-
tives in a complex, multidimensional way would appear to be demonstrated.
The role of Powerlessness in these relationships must also be considered.

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 PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH I 267

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268 / B. MINTON AND B. SPILKA

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