Religijność a postawa wobec śmierci

Abstract

In the paper the problem of a correlation between a religious attitude and an attitude toward death is considered. The problem is investigated in perspectives of thanatological psychology and two different psychometric methods are used to confirm the main conclusions. In these methods are applied a scale of religious attitudes developed by W. Prężyna and a set of thanatological attitudes introduced by the author. Answers giver, by ninety persons of different religious background (theists, atheists, and the indifferent) are investigated in this analysis. The religiosity of these persons is treated as invariable, and their attitude to death as variable. Having distinguished different aspects in human attitude to death., the author undertakes an attempt to define an influence of religious beliefs on reactions dealing with dying. He concludes that there exists a positive correlation between religious beliefs and: a) the acceptance of death; b) the frequency, necessity, content and results of thinking about death; c) and the recognition of personality – forming elements in the experience of death. On the other hand, the study conducted shows that questions dealing with sense of life are posed by all the persons, independently of their religious attitudes.