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Defensive or Existential
Religious Orientations and
Mortality Salience Hypothesis:
Using Conservatism as a
Dependent Measure
a b a
Müjde Koca-Atabey & Bengi Öner-Özkan
a
Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Turkey
b
Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Committee, The Scientific and Technological
Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), Ankara,
Turkey

Available online: 28 Sep 2011

To cite this article: Müjde Koca-Atabey & Bengi Öner-Özkan (2011): Defensive
or Existential Religious Orientations and Mortality Salience Hypothesis: Using
Conservatism as a Dependent Measure, Death Studies, 35:9, 852-865

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 Death Studies, 35: 852–865, 2011
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0748-1187 print=1091-7683 online
DOI: 10.1080/07481187.2011.553319

DEFENSIVE OR EXISTENTIAL RELIGIOUS

ORIENTATIONS AND MORTALITY SALIENCE
HYPOTHESIS: USING CONSERVATISM AS A
DEPENDENT MEASURE

MÜJDE KOCA-ATABEY
Downloaded by [TÜBTAK ULAKBM] at 23:12 09 October 2011

Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University, and

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Committee, The Scientific
and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK),
Ankara, Turkey
BENGİ ÖNER-ÖZKAN
Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

The study examined the relationship between the defensive versus existential
religious orientation and mortality salience hypothesis in a country where the pre-
dominant type of religion is Islam. It was predicted that the mortality reactions of
participants would not differ in accordance with their religious orientations
within a Muslim sample. The dependent variable tested in the study was con-
servatism and it was expected that within the Muslim sample both defensively
and existentially oriented participants would react to mortality salience manipu-
lation. The defensive participants became more conservative in the mortality sali-
ent condition as opposed to failure salience and TV salience conditions. However,
contrary to the authors’ hypothesis, existential participants did not react to mor-
tality salience manipulation. The results were discussed in accordance with the
self-relevance of the conservatism variable, which is the dependent variable of
the study. Research implications and suggestions for future studies were also
provided.

Terror management theory (TMT) suggests that the awareness of

the reality that death is inevitable creates a potential for existential
anxiety (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2000). There are two
main approaches that TMT offers for alleviating this fundamental
fear: (a) adopting a cultural worldview that gives meaning to

Received 7 October 2009; accepted 23 June 2010.

Address correspondence to Bengı̇ Öner-Özkan, Department of Psychology, Middle
East Technical University, 06531 Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: bengi@[Link]

852
 Defensive or Existential Religious Orientations 853

reality, which is a shared knowledge, or (b) strengthening self-

esteem that reduces anxiety in response to threats (Jonas & Fischer,
2006; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1998; Solomon et al.,
2000). According to TMT, when people are reminded about death,
they defend or validate their cultural worldviews (mortality
salience hypothesis); alternatively, they may try to maintain or
enhance their self-esteem (self-esteem hypothesis; Greenberg,
Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997).
This article concentrates on the mortality salience hypothesis.
Mortality salience manipulations lead participants to adhere to
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their cultural worldviews. The literature argues that after thinking

about their own death, people become polarized in terms of their
beliefs to manage their existential fear of death (e.g., Landau,
Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006).
Terror of death is the most important factor that leads to terror
management reactions, and religious beliefs play a protective role
in managing terror of death (Jonas & Fischer, 2006). Religion plays
a beneficial role for many people (Pargament, 2002) as it is a sys-
tem of coping with existential and death anxiety. Religious beliefs
might be motivated by the goal of providing existential comfort
(Pevey, Jones, & Yarber, 2008–2009) by repressing existential
fears. Believing in a religion, one does not even have to resort to
culture to achieve symbolic immortality; as most religions bring
out a powerful concept of ‘‘actual immortality’’ conveyed by the
belief in an afterlife (Cohen et al., 2005). Thus, religion in this
way seems to solve the problem of death (Becker, 1973), and
religious beliefs relieve death anxiety and act similar to a cultural
defense (Norenzayan, Hansen, & Cady, 2008).
Two basic religious orientations play a role in reactions to
mortality salience effects in TMT (Beck, 2006a), namely, defensive
versus existential. This conceptualization is important in answering
one of the basic questions about religious beliefs: why people
believe in religions. A defensive orientation to religion reduces
doubts and fears in life. Defensive believers believe that God has
a unique plan for them and God will help even with trivial hassles
in life. God watches them, protects them, and guides them.
Because of their faith, they feel a kind of specialness that could
bring protection and insight (Beck, 2004). A defensive orientation
toward religion functions as a defense mechanism that protects the
psyche from existential realities. Existential orientation does not
 854 M. Koca-Atabey and B. O¨ner-O¨zkan

reduce doubts and confusion. Rather, faith and anxieties of life

simultaneously exist. Existential believers believe that ‘‘it rains
on the just and the unjust.’’ God rarely guides life choices; God
does not micromanage the world. Thus, they do not believe in
their own specialness (Beck, 2006b). Defensively religious indivi-
duals react more conservatively to mortality salience compared
to existentially oriented individuals (Beck, 2006a).
Belief of protection might be a concept relevant in terror man-
agement. As the defensive orientation guarantees protection and
the existential faith does not, terror management might work dif-
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ferently in those with different belief orientations. Research indi-

cates that participant characteristics could influence reactions to
mortality salience manipulations (Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski,
Solomon, & Chatel, 1992). Compared to existential individuals,
defensive individuals may feel relatively safe and secure because
they assume that they are special in God’s eyes and that God will
favor and protect them (Bassett et al., 2009). Consequently, a
defensive orientation would lead individuals to become reactive
when mortality is salient, and existential orientation would make
them nonreactive (Beck, 2004). It has been found that defensive
participants (Christian) display a worldview defense (favor the
Christian essayist relative to the Buddhist essayist) when mortality
is salient but existential participants’ ratings are equal for the two
essays so they do not show a worldview defense. However, the
defensive participants also display worldview defense when mor-
tality is not salient (Beck, 2006a). Thus, it can be concluded that
the mortality salience hypothesis seems to be valid only for defens-
ive participants. Therefore, further research is needed to clarify the
link between different religious orientations and mortality and with
different religious groups such as Muslims.
Conservatism is another concept relevant to TMT. Conserva-
tism is a generalized susceptibility toward threat or anxiety in the
face of uncertainty (Wilson, 1973), and it underlies almost all social
attitudes (Boshier, 1972). Conservatism correlates with religious
fundamentalism, right-wing political orientation, insistence on
strict rules and punishments, intolerance of minority groups,
preference for conventional art, clothing and institutions, anti-
hedonistic outlook, superstitious resistance to science (Wilson &
Patterson, 1968), and preference for capital punishment (Boots,
Cochran, & Heide, 2003). In contrast to the unitary formulation
 Defensive or Existential Religious Orientations 855

of the Conservatism Scale, Ray (1973) argued that there are differ-
ent dimensions such as political, economic, moral, and social con-
servatism. Crowson (2009) stated that cultural conservatism and
fear of death are significant predictors of dogmatic aggression. In
TMT, some researchers use single items to capture the worldview
in relation to conservatism, an example could be attitudes toward
birth control (e.g., Zhou, Liu, Chen, & Yu, 2008). Such single items
might be incomplete to represent a general worldview. Therefore,
in the present study instead of using single items, we used a general
measure of conservatism to achieve a comprehensive conservatism
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worldview, consistent with TMT.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the reac-
tions of people with different religious orientations (defensive ver-
sus existential) when reminded of their own mortality. Some might
argue that for a Muslim population, the defensive–existential dif-
ferentiation might not be salient in terms of worldview defense
reactions. There is an emphasis on death-related issues in Islam
(e.g., Hossain & Siddique, 2008; Martin & Phelan, 2002). Accord-
ing to Islam, death is not an end but a transition between lives
(Hossain & Siddique, 2008). Death is conceptualized with accept-
ance and regarded as a natural process; accordingly, ‘‘prolonged
public expression of grief and ritualized mourning are discouraged
in Islamic practice which places great value on the acceptance of
God’s or Allah’s will with restraint and understanding’’ (Rubin &
Yasien-Esmael, 2004, p. 149). However, this understanding may
not lessen fear of death completely. Experts argue that death anxi-
ety is a deeply rooted phenomenon motivated unconsciously
(Langs, 2008). According to this view, death anxiety is universal
(Ka-ying Hui & Fung, 2009), stems from denial, and disrupts adapt-
ive functioning (Langs, 2008). In the mortality salience literature in
Turkey (Asliturk, 2001; Bozo, Tunca, & Simsek, 2009; Kökdemir &
Yeniçeri, 2010; Yavuz & van den Boss, 2009) mortality salience
manipulations are seen to work. Thus, one may imply that a tacit
fear of death exists even in Islam, in which death is considered to
be from God.
As originally demonstrated by Alexander and colleagues,
overt expressions of death and covert physiological arousal to
death cues are inversely related (Alexander & Costanzo, 2006).
When people perceive threats, their expression of low death fear
can be regarded as defensive (Alexander & Costanzo, 2006). Thus,
 856 M. Koca-Atabey and B. O¨ner-O¨zkan

we may argue that tacit fear of death might be even more influen-
tial than expressed fear as regards to mortality salience reactions.
Thus, the worldview defense responses of Turkish participants
might be prevalent even among existential ones. In other words,
even Turkish existential believers may have tacit defensive tenden-
cies. Thus, in contrast to Beck’s (2006a) formulation, we hypothe-
sized that both defensive and existential participants would show
worldview defense under mortality salient conditions but not in
mortality nonsalient conditions. Conservatism is used as an indica-
tion of worldview defense, and it is predicted that the conservatism
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scores in the mortality salience condition would be significantly

higher than the control conditions for both defensive and existen-
tial participants (as we do not expect any differences between
defensive and existentialist participants in terms of TMT), and that
defensive participants would be more conservative than existential
ones.

Method

Participants

There were 239 participants (184 women, 53 men, two not report-
ing gender) from two different universities in Ankara, Turkey. One
group was undergraduates studying for a degree in theology from
the Faculty of Theological Studies (n ¼ 134); the other group was
regular university students (n ¼ 105) studying various nontheology
subjects (i.e., psychology, cognitive science, economy, foreign lan-
guage education). The mean age was 20.74 (age range: 18–25).
Most were living in a dormitory (44.3%) or with their friends
(31.1%). There were 74 senior students as compared to 57 juniors.
Most students described their income level as moderate (72.5%).
Theology and nontheology students were not significantly different
in income or nationalism (M ¼ 3.90, SD ¼ 1.53) on a scale from
1(not nationalistic at all) to 7 (extremely nationalistic). On single ques-
tions, however, compared to theology students regular university
students were significantly more leftist (M ¼ 3.94, SD ¼ 1.56 versus
M ¼ 5.12, SD ¼ 1.10, respectively), t(223) ¼ 10.79, p < .01, d ¼ 1.44,
on a scale from 1 (extremely leftist) to 7 (extremely rightist) and less
religious (M ¼ 4.01, SD ¼ 1.50 versus M ¼ 5.22, SD ¼ .93), t(223) ¼
7.29, p < .01, d ¼ .98, on a scale from 1 (not at all religious) to
 Defensive or Existential Religious Orientations 857

7 (extremely religious). They are also more likely to be existential,

t(237) ¼ 6.28, p < .01, d ¼ .82.

Materials

The Defensive Theology Scale (DTS; Beck, 2006a) has 22 items

about the belief of personal distinctiveness for God or the protec-
tive power of God (e.g., ‘‘I believe God protects me from illness
and misfortune’’). Items are on a 7-point Likert scale from 1
(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). With six items reverse-coded,
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the possible range was 22–154. Beck (2006a) did not provide an
alpha score for internal consistency but presented that DTS was
correlated negatively with quest motives and religious pluralism.
The reliability coefficient of the DTS for Christian undergraduate
students was .90 (Bassett et al., 2009). The reliability coefficient
for the present study was .94.
The Conservatism Scale (CS; Wilson & Patterson, 1968) has
50 items (e.g., ‘‘I believe in birth control’’) answered ‘‘yes,’’ ‘‘no,’’
or ‘‘uncertain.’’ In the Turkish translation of the scale, items are
given as sentences not as phrases as in the original case. For item
45, Learning Latin was adapted as Learning Arabic. With reverse
scoring, the possible range is 0–100, with high scores indicating
more conservatism. Three of the original items (chaperones, licens-
ing laws, and fluoridation) were dropped because they were
unclear or incoherent. For this current study, CS was found as
internally consistent provided a reliable alpha coefficient (.87) with
a 47-item solution (the CS with 50 items provides the same
reliability coefficient).
Similar to Wilson and Patterson (1968), the scale was vali-
dated by a known group analysis (see also Hogan, 1975). The part-
icipants of the present study who study theology were more
conservative (M ¼ 54.25, SD ¼ 5.10) than the participants who are
regular university students (M ¼ 35.99.68, SD ¼ 11.35), t(236) ¼
16.60, p < .01. On the other hand, the participants who reported
voting for right-wing parties were found to be more conservative
(M ¼ 52.09, SD ¼ 7.44) than the participants who voted for
left-wing parties (M ¼ 31.16, SD ¼ 8.18), t(176) ¼ 16.30, p < .01.
The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Watson,
Clark, & Tellegen, 1998) consisted of 10 positive (PA) and 10 nega-
tive adjectives (NA) answered on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (very
 858 M. Koca-Atabey and B. O¨ner-O¨zkan

slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely). The PANAS was translated into

Turkish by Gencoz (2000), who found two internally consistent
factors using a factor analysis. In the present sample, internal con-
sistencies were .89 for PA and .86 for NA.

Procedure

Before the study, we and a bilingual social sciences graduate pur-

sued the translations and the back translations of DTS and CS.
During regular class, students completed the demographic infor-
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mation sheet, the Turkish DTS scale, then the mortality salience
or control manipulations.
In the mortality salience condition, students were asked to
indicate (a) the feelings that the thought of their own death arouses
in them and (b) what will happen to them physically when they die
and once they are dead. In the failure salience condition, students
were asked to indicate (a) the feelings that the thought of failing an
important exam arouses in them and (b) what will happen to you
when you fail an important exam. In the TV salience condition,
students were asked to indicate (a) the feelings that watching TV
arouses in them and (b) what will happen to you when you are
watching TV. After that, they completed the PANAS and a word
search puzzle. Last, they completed the Turkish CS and were
debriefed about the study.

Results

Similar to Beck (2006a), a median split on the DTS was used to

group students as defensive or existential in religious orientations
(see Table 1). On the CS, a 2 (Religious Orientation: Defensive,
Existential)
3 (Manipulation: Mortality, Failure, and TV)
between-subjects analysis of variance yielded a main effect for
religious orientation, F(1, 235) ¼ 47.44, p < .01, g2 ¼ .16, with the

TABLE 1 DTS Scores of Defensive and Existential Participants

Participant n M SD

Defensive participants 117 135.65 6.57

Existential participants 119 94.26 24.24
 Defensive or Existential Religious Orientations 859

defensive participants being more conservative (M ¼ 51.57, SD ¼

7.30) than the existential participants (M ¼ 40.99, SD ¼ 14.08).
A main effect for manipulation type was also found, F(2,
235) ¼ 5.29, p < .05, g2 ¼ .03. Tukey’s post-hoc indicated that con-
servatism scores for students in the mortality salient condition
(M ¼ 48.11, SD ¼ 13.06) were significantly higher than conserva-
tism scores for students in the TV salience condition (M ¼ 43.11,
SD ¼ 13.11) but not significantly different from conservatism scores
of students in the failure salience condition (M ¼ 46.62, SD ¼ 9.44).
Conservatism scores of students in the failure salience and TV
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salience conditions did not significantly differ.

Besides these main effects, a significant Mortality Salience

Religious Orientation interaction effect was found, F(2, 235) ¼
4.25, p < .05, g2 ¼ .02. Existential students had significantly lower
conservatism scores in the TV salience condition when compared
to the mortality and failure salience conditions, whose conserva-
tism scores did not differ significantly. On the other hand, defens-
ive students had significantly higher conservatism scores in the
mortality salience condition compared to the failure salience and
TV salience conditions (see Table 2).
Compared to existential students, defensive students were
more religious, t(221) ¼ 6.22, p < .01, d ¼ .84), and more likely
to vote for right wing parties, t(221) ¼ 4.74, p < .01, d ¼ .64. The
conservatism scores of the women and men students did not differ

TABLE 2 Means and Standard Deviations for Type of Religious Orientation

(Defensive–Existential) and Types of Manipulation (Mortality–Failure–TV)

Defensive religious Existential religious

Manipulation type orientation orientation

Mortality salience
M 54.84 a 42.05 c
SD 4.97 15.03
Failure salience
M 49.04 b 44.68 c
SD 7.60 10.41
TV salience
M 49.77 b 36.58 d
SD 7.96 14.57
Note. The mean scores on the same row or on the same column that do not share the same
subscript are significantly different from each other.
 860 M. Koca-Atabey and B. O¨ner-O¨zkan

significantly. Furthermore, age was not correlated with the con-

servatism levels.

Discussion

The study failed to find a main effect for the mortality salience
hypothesis. The conservatism scores of participants in the mor-
tality and failure salience conditions were found to be equal. In
fact, this finding leads to the line of reasoning that the differen-
tiation regarding religious orientations is vital in explaining the
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worldview defense reactions that will be discussed in the analysis

of the interaction effect.
In contrast to the hypothesis that states that both defensive
and existential participants would show worldview defense, it
was found that only defensive participants become more conserva-
tive in the mortality salient condition as opposed to the failure and
TV salience conditions, but existential participants were not
observed to react to mortality salience manipulation. Defensive
participants reported a worldview defense (i.e., became more con-
servative) only in the mortality salience condition but not in the
other two control conditions. Thus, their reactions were com-
pletely in accord with the mortality salience hypothesis. On the
other hand, existential participants scored lower in conservatism
in the TV salience condition compared to the failure salience con-
dition; however, their conservatism scores were not significantly
different in the mortality and failure salience conditions. If the
reactions of defensive and existential participants are compared,
it could be argued that the mortality salience hypothesis did not
seem to appropriately explain the reactions of the existential part-
icipants at least for this current sample. Beck (2006a) stated that the
reactions of defensive and existential participants were different
with respect to the mortality salience. However, in this study we
expected that worldview defense reactions would be similar for
both defensive and existential participants. The underlying reason-
ing for this hypothesis was that even existential participants would
have defensive characteristics in Turkey as a result of their tacit
fear of death conveyed by Islam. However, the results lead to
the view that either this conceptualization was wrong or an alterna-
tive explanation was necessary. The literature has a current answer
for this issue. It is argued that the self-relevance of the dependent
 Defensive or Existential Religious Orientations 861

variable used in TMT manipulations is important because people

vary in their worldviews. For instance, young men who perceive
driving as self-relevant engage in more reckless driving after mor-
tality salience manipulation than men who do not perceive driving
as self-relevant (Taubman–Ben-Ari, 2000). It could be stated that
for the existential participants (who were also found to be less con-
servative) conservatism is not self-relevant. To show worldview
defense reactions, perhaps existential believers should be tested
on another dependent variable. It could be liberalism, tolerance
to ambiguity, or any other variable that is more self-relevant for
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the existential believers. The universality of the mortality salience

hypothesis could only be evident with appropriate dependent
variables. Therefore, the self-relevance of the dependent measure
should be carefully considered in mortality salience studies. It
must also be stated that this needs to be studied further to obtain
more explanatory answers. The defensive–existential differen-
tiation should also be tested in further studies with other
relevant variables.
The other explanation is that Beck’s (2004) differentiation
concerning belief orientations as a crucial factor for explaining
mortality salience effects and differences between defensive and
existential believers might be a universal issue with important
implications for TMT. The present findings gave support for
Beck’s (2006a) differentiation, indicating that the theory seems to
be valid for defensive believers but not for existential believers,
at least for some dependent variables. Similarly, for some depen-
dent variables TMT may not work for defensive believers.
As expected, defensive students were more conservative than
existential students. Beck (2004) defined defensive believers as dog-
matic and intolerant individuals with simplistic faith schemas and
believing in their own specialness. It has also been revealed that
defensive participants tend to have right-wing political orienta-
tions. In the present research, they were found to be more religious
and more conservative than the existential ones. Beck stated that
existential believers were doubtful and tentative and had more
complex faith schemas. It could be added that they were less
religious and less conservative, and they had a tendency to vote
for left wing parties. Thus, the present study confirmed and
contributed to Beck’s (2004) conceptualization of defensive and
existential religious orientations.
 862 M. Koca-Atabey and B. O¨ner-O¨zkan

In addition to the debate regarding religious orientations, the

present study also introduced the use of a general conservatism
score as a dependent variable for mortality salience studies, and
it was suggested that a total conservatism measure also functioned
effectively. Landau et al. (2006) stated that after being reminded of
their own mortality, peoples’ support for a conservative party
increased. They presented a Likert scale to assess the level of con-
servatism and concluded that after mortality salience manipulation
participants became more conservative. Thus, the literature is fam-
iliar with the use of indicators of conservatism as a dependent
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measure. However, using single indicators of conservatism might

be misleading. For instance, voting for a conservative party may
not be always correlated with being or becoming conservative.
For example, Kalaycioglu (2007) argued that most supporters of
religious-traditional and conservative parties such as the Justice
and Development Party in Turkey tend to vote out of expected
economic benefits rather than purely ideological beliefs. Thus, in
the present study, rather than using one of the specific indicators
of conservatism, a more direct and comprehensive measure of
worldview is preferred. It could be also added that the Conserva-
tism Scale used in this study is parallel to and comprises each of
the separately used dependent variables used in the literature.
An example could be a belief in legalized abortion (Greenberg,
Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Rosenblatt, 1990) or an appreciation of
modern art (Landau et al., 2006).
The study is limited in not including a second dependent vari-
able, which could be more self-relevant to the existential parti-
cipants. Also, it might be advantageous to measure the degree of
religiosity not with a single measure but with a more detailed scale.
This discussion might be also applicable for the political orien-
tation measure. In addition, future studies could offer alternative
dependent variables for participants who have different world-
views (see Taubman–Ben-Ari, 2000; Taubman–Ben-Ari & Findler,
2003, for a discussion). An alternative dependent variable might be
attitudes toward environmentalism or recycling.

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