A preliminary examination of the associations between belief in God and in afterlife, death anxiety, and COVID-19 protective behaviours within a non-representative Polish community sample

Abstract

ABSTRACT A common form of dealing with death anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was to comply with protective behaviours. Researchers observed that religious people were less likely to comply with protective behaviours. At the same time, religious people usually felt lower death anxiety since they believed in an afterlife more strongly than non-religious people. We explored these complex mechanisms by examining the relationship between a declaration of belief in God, death anxiety, belief in an afterlife, and protective behaviours during the pandemic. We examined 551 participants from a non-representative Polish sample. According to structural equation modelling analysis, declaring oneself as a believer, predominantly as Catholic, was positively associated with belief in an afterlife, which, like death anxiety, but independent of it, was associated with perceiving COVID-19 as a non-severe disease, which was associated with low fear of the disease and disregard for protective behaviours. Thus, our preliminary results allowed us to distinguish belief in God and an afterlife from death anxiety as two independent determinants of compliance with protective behaviours. Finally, the positive relationship between death anxiety and compliance with protective behaviours suggested that people attempted to alleviate thoughts of death by engaging in protective behaviours during the pandemic.