Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801

www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp

Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs resultsin increased death awareness �

Mike Friedman a,b,¤, W. Steven Rholes a

a Texas A&M University, TX, USAb University of Clermont-Ferrand, LAPSCO/UFR Psychologie, 34, Avenue Carnot, 63037 Clermont-Ferrand Cedex, France

Received 28 November 2005; revised 28 July 2006Available online 22 September 2006

Abstract

Terror management theory argues that human understanding of mortality creates an existential anxiety that must be kept under con-stant control. Defenses—such as beliefs that provide permanence, predictability, and meaning—are erected whose function is in part tokeep thoughts about death as far removed from consciousness as possible. The current study investigated the defensive function of Chris-tian fundamentalist belief in managing death-awareness. The general hypothesis of the study is that challenges to such beliefs undermineone’s ability to control cognitions related to mortality. More speciWcally, it was hypothesized that successful challenges to this form ofreligious belief would make death-related cognitions more accessible to consciousness. Self-identiWed Christians, both fundamentalistsand non-fundamentalists, encountered material that challenged the fundamentalist belief that the Christian Bible is free of inconsistenciesand contradictions. Consistent with expectations, under these conditions higher levels of accessibility of death-related cognition werefound among fundamentalist Christians, but not their non-fundamentalist counterparts.© 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Fundamentalism; Religion; Terror management; Death-thought accessibility

Religious worldviews and terror management

Terror management theory (TMT: e.g., Greenberg, Solo-mon, & Pyszczynski, 1997) addresses the universal humanconXict between the desire to live and the knowledge thatdeath is certain. It argues that human understanding ofmortality creates an existential anxiety that, if not continu-ally kept in check, would undermine ordinary, adaptivebehavior. Most people, according to TMT, subscribe to asystem of values and beliefs that provide meaning and pur-pose to their lives. Such “cultural worldviews” are one ofthe most important defenses against existential anxiety(Greenberg, Arndt, Schimel, Pyszczynski, & Solomon,2001; Schmeichel & Martens, 2005). These protective struc-

� The authors thank Ramona L. Paetzold, Eddie Harmon-Jones, andBrandon Schmeichel for their assistance with this paper.

* Corresponding author. Fax: +33 4 73 40 64 82.E-mail address: friedman@srvpsy.univ-bpclermont.fr (M. Friedman).

0022-1031/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.07.008

tures may include either secular or religious content (orboth). Self-esteem constitutes another signiWcant defense.From the perspective of TMT, self-esteem is deWned as thebelief that one is a valued member of a meaningful societyor group. Self-esteem compliments worldview defenses,such that individuals with higher self-esteem need to rely onworldview defenses less than their counterparts when mor-tality is made salient (Harmon-Jones et al., 1997).

To date, empirical work on religion and terror manage-ment has been scant (Batson & Stocks, 2004). However,some recent work has begun to investigate the link betweenthe two. For example, Norenzayan and Hansen (2006) pres-ent evidence which suggests that contemplation of one’smortality can, in some cases, increase belief in supernaturalagents, and Atran and Norenzayan (2004) make the casethat belief in supernatural agents with omniscient andomnipotent powers can assuage existential anxiety. Consis-tent with these Wndings, Dechesne et al. (2003) found thatpriming procedures that increased belief in a literal

M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801 795

immortality lessened the impact of experimental proce-dures that made participants more aware of their physicalmortality. These Wndings are important in that they suggestthat religious belief may serve the same type of defensivefunction associated with secular worldview defenses.

Most research on TMT has addressed one of two com-plimentary hypotheses. The “mortality salience” hypothesisstates that, if a psychological structure (e.g., a set of beliefs)provides protection against death-related concerns andanxieties, reminding individuals of their mortality shouldincrease their reliance on that structure. A common Wndingfrom such research is that after brieXy contemplating theirown mortality individuals report stronger belief in ordefense of the cherished ideas and symbols that constitutetheir cultural worldviews (e.g., Greenberg, Porteus, Simon,Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1995; Greenberg, Simon,Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992). The “anxietybuVer” hypothesis states that, if a psychological structureprovides protection against death-related concerns andanxiety, weakening that structure should increase thoughtsand concerns about mortality (e.g., Harmon-Jones et al.,1997). For recent reviews of terror management theory andresearch, see Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, andSchimel (2004), or Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Greenberg(2003).

The primary purpose of the present study is to investi-gate the anxiety buVer hypothesis in the context of religiousbelief. Pyszczynski et al. (2003) argue that one of the moreeVective defensive structures may be religious worldviews,in particular those that are comprised of beliefs that arerigid, unquestioned, and include a concrete depiction of anafterlife. They should be eVective because they create asense of certainty, permanence, and the promise of a formof immortality (cf. Dechesne et al., 2003; van den Bos,Poortvliet, Maas, Miedema, & van den Ham, 2005). Thefundamentalist versions of both Christianity and Islamwould both seem to meet the criteria listed by Pyszczynskiet al. (2003). If religious fundamentalism does, in fact, serveas a defensive function, TMT’s anxiety buVer hypothesispredicts that introducing questions or doubts about impor-tant elements of the fundamentalist worldview—i.e., shak-ing some of its concrete beliefs—should increase theaccessibility of cognitions related to death.

In order to understand the nature of the hypothesizedeVect, it is helpful to understand TMT’s “dual processmodel” of defenses against death anxiety (Pyszczynski,Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). According to this model,“proximal” defenses are conscious, rational attempts torebuV death anxiety, for example, actively distracting one-self from an actual reminder of death in one’s environment.“Distal” defenses operate at an implicit level and embed theindividual in a meaningful and enduring reality in order todefend against death-related thoughts that are outside ofcurrent consciousness. The beliefs that constitute the distaldefenses are always active; as such, distal defenses operate“whenever the individual is awake and conscious”(Pyszczynski et al., 1999, p. 839). In the context of the pres-

ent study, our attempts to shake fundamentalist beliefs con-stitute an attack on a distal defense of fundamentalistindividuals. If such attacks are successful, fundamentalists’distal defenses should be weakened, and such individualsshould thus evidence increased accessibility of death-related constructs (cf. Florian, Mikulincer, & Hirschberger,2002; Goldenberg, Cox, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solo-mon, 2002; Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, McCoy, Greenberg,& Solomon, 1999; Landau et al., 2004; Mikulincer, Florian,Birnbaum, & Malishkevich, 2002).

Religious fundamentalism is deWned by Altemeyer andHunsberger (1992, p. 118) as the belief that “there is one setof religious teachings that clearly contains the fundamental,basic, intrinsic, essential, inerrant truth about humanityand deity; that this essential truth is fundamentallyopposed by forces of evil which must be vigorously fought;that this truth must be followed today according to the fun-damental, unchangeable practices of the past; and thatthose who believe and follow these fundamental teachingshave a special relationship with the deity.” In his analysis ofChristian fundamentalism, Barr (1977) argues that centralto fundamentalist ideology are belief in the literal truth ofthe Bible, hostility to modern theology, and a strong beliefthat people who do not share the fundamentalist worldvieware not “true Christians.” Pargament (2002) reported thatfundamentalists have an unquestioned sense of right andwrong, unambiguous rules for living, and believe that theirlives are sanctioned and supported by God. Finally, accord-ing to Dobson, Hindson, and Falwell (1986), the Wrst tenetof Christian religious fundamentalism is the belief that theChristian Bible is error-free and literally true. Consistentwith this, survey data show that fundamentalists endorsethe Christian Bible’s depiction of heaven and hell morestrongly than other Christian groups (Exline, 2003; Hood,Spilka, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 1996).

Participants in the present study, who each identiWedthemselves as Christian and who varied in levels of religiousfundamentalism, were exposed to passages from the Gos-pels that could challenge the belief that the Christian Bibleis without inconsistencies and contradictions. Drawing onTMT’s anxiety buVer hypothesis, we hypothesized thatencountering this challenge would increase death-thoughtaccessibility among fundamentalists, but not among otherChristians, for whom the belief in biblical inerrancy is notas central (e.g., Florian et al., 2002; Goldenberg et al., 2002;Landau et al., 2004; Mikulincer et al., 2002).

Methods

Participants

Two hundred and thirty Wve students (109 male, 126female), with a mean age of 18.63, SDD1.03 were recruitedfor this study from introductory psychology classes at alarge southwestern university. All participants self-identi-Wed as Christian; the most frequent denominational aYlia-tions were: Catholic, 27%, Baptist 26%, and Methodist,

796 M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801

13%. Participants received partial course credit for partici-pation.

Procedure

Participants signed up to complete an experiment inwhich they would read and evaluate written material; nomention of religion was made on the sign-up form. Beforethe procedure began, participants were told that some peo-ple in the study would be asked to read and interpret pas-sages from the Bible. All participants were given the chanceto withdraw without penalty before the session began, or atany point during the experiment. No participants withdrew.

All participants completed a packet of materials whichcontained the following questionnaires: the Religious Fun-damentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992,MD111.03, SDD31.73, �D .91), a self-esteem scale (Rosen-berg, 1965, MD32.99, SDD 6.94, �D .92), the Quest Scale(Batson & Schoenrade, 1991, MD55.71, SDD 14.76,�D .78) and the Religious Orientation Scale (Allport &Ross, 1967). The Quest Scale assesses the extent to whichindividuals are constantly seeking religious truth in theirlives. The Religious Orientation measure includes two sub-scales, intrinsic religious orientation (MD 58.95,SDD12.42, �D .83) and extrinsic religious orientation(MD 45.06, SDD 13.43, �D .78). The intrinsic scale assessesthe degree to which religion is pursued for spiritual beneWts;among persons scoring high on this scale religion consti-tutes a central life motive. The extrinsic scale assesses thedegree to which social and other non-spiritual beneWtsmotivate religious behavior.

The fundamentalism scale does not address Christianfundamentalism speciWcally; no items pertain to religiousdogma. It is designed to assess fundamentalist approachesto religions. See Table 1 for representative items from thefundamentalism, religious orientation, and quest scales.People who score low on fundamentalism indicate thatmultiple religious truths may exist, that no single approachto religion can claim to hold all truths, and that religiousdogma can be examined and questioned. People who scorehigh indicate a belief in a single, unquestionable religioustruth.

In the primary experimental condition of this study (i.e.,the Resurrection Inconsistency condition), participantswere given each of the four gospels’ accounts of the resur-rection. This material was taken from the New RevisedStandard Version of the Bible (1989) and presented in pho-tocopied form. The Gospel accounts contain modest incon-sistencies in their details; for example, all four accountsdisagree on who went to the tomb where Jesus was buried.Prior to reading this material, each person in this conditionwas asked whether he or she believed the Bible to containerrors, inconsistencies, or contradictions. Their responseoptions were: No. The Bible is free of any errors, contradic-tions, or inconsistencies, Yes. There are a few errors, con-tradictions, and inconsistencies in the Bible, and Yes. TheBible has many errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies.

After reading the accounts of the resurrection, individu-als in this condition read an “impeaching paragraph,”taken from Altemeyer (2002). This paragraph pointed outthe contradictions and inconsistencies in the gospels’accounts, and asked participants how they explained them.They responded by checking one of four options: (a) thereare no contradictions or inconsistencies, (b) there are con-tradictions and inconsistencies due to human errors intranslation, (c) there are contradictions and inconsistenciesbut the central message is the same in each gospel, and (d)there are contradictions and inconsistencies because theresurrection story is a false myth and it developed diVerentversions as it spread.

The next part of the procedure was described to theresearch participants as a pretest of measures that would beused later in the semester. A word-stem completion task,which served as the study’s measure of death thought acces-sibility (e.g., Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, &Breus, 1994), was given to each person in the study. Thistask required that 26 stems (e.g., de_ _) be completed tomake words. Eight of the stems could be completed witheither death-related words (e.g., dead) or one of severalwords unrelated to death (e.g., deer, debt, deed). The num-ber of the 8 stems that were completed to make death-related words served as the measure of death cognitionaccessibility.

The purpose of the Wrst control condition, the Resurrec-tion Control, was to expose readers to the same contentabout death as in the previous condition, but without forc-ing them to explicitly confront contradictions and inconsis-tencies in the material they read. People in this conditionread the same gospel accounts of the resurrection as people

Table 1Representative items from the religiosity scales

Scale and representative items

Religious fundamentalismGod has given mankind a complete, unfailing guide to happiness and

salvation, which must be totally followedThe long-established traditions in religion show the best way to honor and

serve God, and should never be compromisedDiVerent religions and philosophies have diVerent versions of the truth,

and may be equally right in their own way (reverse scored)To lead the best, most meaningful life, one must belong to the one, true

religion

Intrinsic religiosityI try hard to carry my religion over into all my other dealings in lifeReligion is especially important because it answers many questions about

the meaning of life

Extrinsic religiosityThe church is most important as a place to formulate good social

relationshipsA primary reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a

congenial social activity

QuestFor me, doubting is an important part of what it means to be religiousQuestions are far more central to my religious experience than are answers

M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801 797

in the Resurrection Inconsistency condition. They were,thus, exposed to the same death-related content (e.g., thetomb) that people in the Resurrection Inconsistency condi-tion were. They were also exposed to the same contradic-tions in the Gospel passages. There were two diVerencesbetween this and the Resurrection Inconsistency condition.First, before beginning to read, these participants were notasked whether they believed the Bible to contain inconsis-tencies or errors. Thus, nothing made thoughts aboutinconsistencies salient. Second, and more importantly, peo-ple in this condition did not read the “impeaching para-graph” and were not asked questions about possibleinconsistencies in what they had read and, thus, were notforced to confront the inconsistencies as people in the Res-urrection Inconsistency condition did. They were askedabout the language in which the passages were written (e.g.,How rhythmic was it?). In this condition and each of theother control conditions, participants completed the sameword-stem accessibility task as people in the ResurrectionInconsistency condition.

People assigned to the second control condition, theBible Neutral control, read several passages taken from theNew Testament of the New Revised Standard Version ofthe Bible (1989). The purpose of this condition was to con-trol for simple exposure to a religious text. These passagesdid not deal with the resurrection, with death, or with lifeafter death. They were made up of mundane material, suchas the description of a trip taken by one of the disciples,genealogies of biblical personages, and a description of anancient place of worship. People in this condition were alsoasked questions about the characteristics of the language inwhich the passages were written.

Finally, people in the third control condition, theLibrary Control condition, read four diVerent accounts of avisit to a library. The purpose of this condition was to con-trol for exposure to texts containing inconsistencies. Eachaccount described the same basic events, with small detailsdiVering between them (e.g., the street that the library wason). After reading this material, people in this conditionwere asked to explain the contradictions.

Participants were thoroughly debriefed after theexperiment. No participant reported being troubled bythe experimental procedure. All participants were givencontact information for the student counseling center,should they have been disturbed by the study. They werealso given contact information for the second author, touse if they wished to discuss the experiment or their reac-tions to it further. None of the participants exercised thisoption.

Results

Preliminary analyses

For descriptive purposes, the means and standard devia-tions of the death-thought accessibility variable within eachexperimental condition are presented in Table 2.

Analysis of beliefs about inconsistencies and contradic-tions in the Bible showed that 86% of the people in the Res-urrection Inconsistency condition who were above themedian in fundamentalism stated that there were no incon-sistencies or contradictions when Wrst asked, before readingthe material containing inconsistencies. Among individualsbelow the median, only 32% held the same belief, �2

(1)D15.90, p < .01. (Questions about inconsistencies andcontradictions were not asked of people in the study’s otherconditions because it could have focused their attention oninconsistencies and reduced or eliminated the diVerencebetween the Resurrection Inconsistency and the other con-ditions.)

Primary analyses

The primary variables included in our Wrst analysiswere religious fundamentalism, a contrast-coded variablethat examined death-thought accessibility in the Resur-rection Inconsistency condition against the three otherconditions combined, and Wnally the interaction of funda-mentalism and the contrast-coded variable. In order tofulWll the requirement of orthogonality (Cohen, Cohen,West, & Aiken, 2003), two additional contrast-coded fac-tors also were included in the regression equation; theywere unrelated to the hypothesis of this study. The secondcontrast compared the mean death awareness in the Res-urrection Control condition versus the mean death aware-ness in the Bible Neutral condition and the LibraryControl condition combined. The third contrast com-pared the mean death awareness in the Library Controlversus the Bible Neutral condition. The regression equa-tion also included the terms that tested the interactionbetween religious fundamentalism and each of the addi-tional contrast-coded variables. Only the interactionbetween the Wrst contrast described above and fundamen-talism was relevant to this study’s hypothesis. Finally,four control variables were included in the analysis:intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, religious quest,and self-esteem.

Self-esteem was included in the analysis becauseresearch has shown that self-esteem lessens dependence onworldview defenses (Harmon-Jones et al., 1997), whichshould include religious worldviews. Thus, it was impor-tant to account for any impact of self-esteem on death-thought accessibility prior to testing our hypotheses aboutfundamentalist religion. The three religious dimensionswere signiWcantly correlated with fundamentalism,

Table 2Mean levels of death-thought accessibility by condition

Condition Resurrection Inconsistency

Resurrection Control

Bible Neutral

Library Control

Mean death accessibility

2.11 2.17 2.11 1.83

Standard deviation

1.27 1.00 1.12 1.10

798 M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801

(rD¡.53 with quest, rD¡.46 with extrinsic religiosity,rD .61 with intrinsic religiosity, all p’s < .01). These factorswere included because of their potential impact on theaccessibility of death-related cognition and to determinewhether fundamentalism was related to accessibility inde-pendent of these confounding variables. All continuouspredictor variables included in this analysis were centered(Cohen et al., 2003).

All signiWcant predictors from the regression analysesthat follow are reported in the text. As expected, thehypothesized interaction between fundamentalism and theprimary planned comparison variable was signiWcant,�D¡.39, t(211)D 2.04, p < .05, indicating that the meandeath-thought accessibility for high fundamentalists wasgreater in the Resurrection Inconsistency condition than inthe other conditions combined.1 The only other signiWcanteVect was for extrinsic religiosity, �D¡.16, t(211)D2.02,p < .05. This shows that people with high extrinsic religios-ity show less death-thought accessibility.

The simple slopes relating fundamentalism to death-thought accessibility within each condition, controlling forself-esteem and the other religious variables are shown inFig. 1. Fundamentalism was signiWcantly positively associ-ated with death accessibility in the Resurrection Inconsis-tency condition, �D .18, t(211)D 2.31, pD .02.Fundamentalism was not signiWcantly related to deathawareness in the Resurrection Control, Library Control, orBible Neutral conditions (�’sD .05, ¡.03, and .02, respec-tively, all p’s > .05).

Secondary analyses

The secondary analyses focused exclusively on the 54people in the Resurrection Inconsistency condition. As

1 The critical interaction between fundamentalism and experimentalcondition remains signiWcant, �D¡.37, t(218) D 1.98, p < .05, when drop-ping those control variables not related to death-thought accessibility(self-esteem, intrinsic religiosity, and quest). The critical interaction is mar-ginally signiWcant when no control variables are included in the analysis,�D¡.32, t(224) D 1.76, p < .08.

described earlier, before participants were presented withaccounts of the resurrection, they indicated whether or notthey believed that the Bible contained any errors, con-tradictions, or inconsistencies. After confronting theimpeaching paragraph, participants were asked how theyexplained the contradictions and inconsistencies.

For the present analysis, people were classiWed as chang-ing their minds if they initially claimed that there were noinconsistencies in the Bible but agreed that there were incon-sistencies (no matter what the reason) after reading the mate-rials presented to them. Though they were free to choose anyone of three responses to justify the contradictions, the par-ticipants who changed their minds only chose two of theoptions. Forty-six percent of the individuals who changedtheir mind chose option “b” (there are contradictions andinconsistencies due to human errors in translation), and 54%of the individuals who changed their mind chose option “c”(there are contradictions and inconsistencies but the centralmessage is the same in each gospel). Although these two rea-sons vary in rationale, they are similar in many respects.Indeed, the central idea behind both options is essentiallyidentical; both emphasize that the contradictions are minorand appear for reasons that do not undermine the overalltruth of the biblical texts. For this reason, individuals whowent from beforehand claiming that there were no contradic-tions in the Bible to afterwards claiming that contradictionsexisted were classiWed into one “changed mind” group.

People were classiWed as not changing their minds if theyinitially said that there were no errors or inconsistenciesand continued to maintain their position after reading thematerials or if they initially said that there were errors andinconsistencies and maintained that position. These twocategories included all of the people in the ResurrectionInconsistency condition.

A regression analysis was conducted examining theimpact of the change mind variable (contrast coded ¡1 forparticipants who did not change their minds and +1 forthose who changed their minds), religious fundamentalism,and the interaction of these two variables on death-thoughtaccessibility. As in the primary analyses, self-esteem and thethree religious variables served as control variables.

Fig. 1. The relationship of fundamentalism to death-thought accessibility within conditions.

M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801 799

This analysis indicated a signiWcant interaction betweenthe change of mind and religious fundamentalism variables,�D .35, t(44)D 2.27, pD .03. Also signiWcant in this analysiswere main eVects of religious fundamentalism (subse-quently interpreted in the context of its interaction with thechange mind variable) �D .57, t(44)D 2.10, p < .05, intrinsicreligiosity, �D¡.38, t(44)D 2.02, p < .05, and self-esteem,�D .30, t(44)D2.17, p < .05.2

To examine the nature of the change mind by funda-mentalism interaction, the simple slopes of fundamental-ism within the change mind and no change mind groupswere calculated. The slope of fundamentalism within theno change group was not statistically signiWcant, �D .14,t(44) D .64, p > .05. However, there was a strong positiveeVect of fundamentalism within the change mind group,�D .53, t(44) D 2.68, p D .01. This indicates that theincreased death awareness associated with changingone’s mind about Bible inconsistencies was more pro-nounced among more highly fundamentalist individuals.See Fig. 2.

Discriminant analyses

Finally, we conducted additional regression analysesexactly like those reported above to determine whetherthe interaction between fundamentalism and experimen-tal condition that we found in those analyses also wouldbe found if we substituted quest, intrinsic religiosity, orextrinsic religiosity for fundamentalism. Using the fullsample of participants, as we did in the primary analysesreported above, we found that neither intrinsic nor extrin-sic religiosity interacted with experimental condition, all

2 The main eVect of self-esteem indicates that greater self-esteem was as-sociated with increased death-accessibility. This eVect is somewhat count-er-intuitive, though we have found similar results in previous research(Friedman & Rholes, submitted for publication). Furthermore, one otherpublished study has linked higher self-esteem to increased TMT eVects(Baldwin & Wesley, 1996). The main eVect of intrinsic religiosity indicatesthat greater intrinsic religiosity was associated with reduced death-aware-ness. This variable is not signiWcant in the overall analysis, suggesting thatspiritual belief may oVer stronger protection against death awarenesswhen one’s religious beliefs are challenged.

t’s < .80, all p’s > .05. We did, however, Wnd that questinteracted with two of the planned comparisons, one thatcontrasted the mean death awareness in the ResurrectionInconsistency condition versus all other conditions com-bined (�D .44, t(211)D 2.19, p < .05) and another one thatcontrasted the mean death awareness in the Library Con-trol condition versus the Bible Neutral control (�D .36,t(211)D 2.03, p < .05). Inspection of the relationshipbetween quest and death awareness shows that partici-pants in the Library Control condition were highly awareof death if they were low in quest. In the ResurrectionInconsistency condition, in contrast, individuals werehigh in death awareness if they scored high on quest.These reversals seem to account for both interactions, asquest was largely unrelated to death awareness in theBible Control and Resurrection Control conditions.These interactions were unexpected and there is no obvi-ous theoretical reason to account for them.

We also conducted three additional discriminant anal-yses like the secondary analyses above using only the par-ticipants in the Resurrection Inconsistency condition.These analyses showed that none of the other measures ofreligiosity (intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, orquest) interacted with the change of mind contrast vari-able reported in the secondary analyses above, allt’s < 1.90, all p’s > .05.3 These discriminant analyses appearto show that the linkage between religious fundamental-ism and death awareness shown in the original analyses isnot duplicated by other dimensions of religious belief.

3 The interaction between changing one’s mind and intrinsic religiosityapproached signiWcance, t(44) D 1.89, p D .07. Inspection of the patterns ofintrinsic religiosity and death awareness revealed that, among those whodid not change their minds, awareness was particularly high among low in-trinsics and particularly low among high intrinsics. There was virtually norelationship between intrinsic religiosity and death awareness among thoseparticipants who changed their minds. This suggests that intrinsic religios-ity does not duplicate the patterns of accessibility found among funda-mentalists who did and did not change their minds. The parallelinteractions between changing one’s mind and quest and extrinsic religios-ity, respectively, did not approach signiWcance, both t’s < 1.00, bothp’s > .30.

Fig. 2. The eVect of fundamentalism and changing one’s mind on death-thought accessibility in the Resurrection Inconsistency condition.

800 M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801

Discussion

The goal of the present study was to disrupt the on-going process (Pyszczynski et al., 1999) of keeping thoughtsabout mortality in check among more fundamentalist indi-viduals by temporarily introducing doubts about a centraltenet of Christian fundamentalism. After reading materialcontaining inconsistencies, the accessibility of death-relatedcognitions was higher among more fundamentalist persons,as hypothesized. In contrast, fundamentalism scores werenot signiWcantly associated with death-thought accessibilityin the three control conditions. These Wndings are consis-tent with the anxiety buVer hypothesis, and they show thatnaturally occurring religious beliefs can function as adefense against death-related concerns as secular world-views do.

This study also showed that increased death awarenesswas associated with participants changing their beliefs afterbeing challenged. Some participants maintained that thereare no inconsistencies or contradictions in the Bible evenafter reading material containing inconsistencies. Thesebelievers did not show the eVects that their counterpartswho changed their minds did. For them, the accessibility ofdeath-related thoughts remained low.

Among those persons who did change their opinions, itis impossible to know the extent of their change. The alter-natives they selected after being confronted with the incon-sistencies suggested that they felt that the essentialmeaning of the passages from the Bible that they readremained unchanged for them. Some individuals’ beliefsmay have changed more than this suggests, however. It ispossible that some even began to doubt the reality of theresurrection. No matter how extensive their change ofmind was or what aspects of their religious views mighthave been called into question, the present Wndings remainconsistent with the logic of the anxiety buVer hypothesis,that weakening belief in structures that protect againstdeath related concerns raises the accessibility of deathrelated cognition.

The passages read in this study addressed fundamental-ists’ beliefs speciWcally. Thus, we expected diVerences inaccessibility only along the dimension of fundamentalism.Our results, however, do not indicate that challenging fun-damentalist beliefs has unique eVects. If, for example,important aspects of the worldview of persons high inintrinsic religiosity changed in response to a challenge, sim-ilar eVects on accessibility should emerge. Similar eVectsalso can be found among persons whose worldviews aresecular (cf. Goldenberg et al., 1999).

We reported that not all of the participants scoringabove the mean on fundamentalism accepted the view thatthe Christian Bible is free of inconsistencies and errors. Thismay seem unexpected since the introduction to thisresearch cites Dobson et al.’s (1986) deWnition of funda-mentalism as prominently including the belief that the Bibleis free of errors and literally true. There is an important dis-tinction between Dobson et al.’s (1986) and Altemeyer and

Hunsberger’s (1992) deWnitions of fundamentalism. Dob-son et al. (1986) focus on Christian dogma in their under-standing of fundamentalism. The Altemeyer andHunsberger (1992) scale, in contrast, assesses fundamental-ism without making reference to the dogma of any particu-lar religion. Thus, it is possible for individuals who do notaccept aspects of Christian fundamentalist dogma to scorehigh on fundamentalism on this scale. In the present study,14% of the individuals scoring above the median for funda-mentalism did not view the Christian Bible as free fromcontradictions and inconsistencies.

In the process of introducing questions about the funda-mentalist worldview, participants in the ResurrectionInconsistency condition read material that contained manyreminders of death. One might suggest that these reminders,not the recognition of inconsistencies, increased the accessi-bility of cognitions related to mortality. We believe thatthere are several reasons to reject this interpretation. First,all participants in the Resurrection Inconsistency conditionwere exposed to these reminders, but higher levels of acces-sibility were found primarily among more fundamentalistparticipants. Second, fundamentalism was not associatedwith higher death-thought accessibility among individualswho did not change their mind about biblical inconsisten-cies. Finally, the eVects obtained in the Resurrection Incon-sistency condition were not duplicated in the ResurrectionControl condition, where participants were exposed to thesame reminders of death.

If any worldview is intended to address existential anxi-ety, it would seem to be religion. Because religious world-views may play an important role in managing existentialanxiety, intellectual, cultural, or other challenges to a reli-gion may be met with strong eVorts to maintain belief bydiscrediting or otherwise rejecting the source of the chal-lenge. In some instances, these eVorts could include vio-lence. Consistent with this view, Pyszczynski et al. (2006)found that Islamic students expressed greater approval fora fellow student who endorsed religiously motivated mar-tyrdom attacks against the US, as well as greater willing-ness to join the student martyr’s cause, after being madeaware of their own mortality.

In conclusiopn, the results from this study show thatcontemplating contradictions in Bible passages increaseddeath awareness for high fundamentalist, but not low fun-damentalist, Christians. This increase was most pro-nounced among high fundamentalists who changed theirminds about contradictions and inconsistencies in theBible. This result is consistent with the TMT anxietybuVer hypothesis. The emerging conclusions from thepresent work and other recent terror management studies(Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006; Pyszczynski et al., 2006)suggest that religious belief can be an important terrormanagement mechanism. Delineating the process bywhich religious belief inXuences the terror managementprocess (and vice versa) may help us more fully under-stand the psychological function of religion and thesource of religious conXict.

M. Friedman, W. Steven Rholes / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007) 794–801 801

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