331 19 Scaring the Bejesus into People The Role of Religious Belief in Managing Implicit and Explicit Anxiety JAMIN HALBERSTADT AND JONATHAN JONG H umans are anxious creatures. For a species at the top of the food chain, we have delicate sensibilities, with over 500 documented phobias (including aulophobia, the fear of flutes). We may have cornered the market on deadly force, yet we easily become anxious when left out of a ball tossing game (see Zadro, Godwin & Gonsalkorale, this volume), and downright terrified at the prospect of singing in public. Consequently, much of our behav- ioral, cognitive and emotional efforts go into avoiding and, in some heroic cases, overcoming anxieties. Yet there is one source of anxiety that no behavior modification can avoid, and no cognitive work can rationalize away: our own death. Unlike flutes, our demise is unavoidable and, naturally, upsetting, and coping with death’s inevi- tability requires more than therapy: it requires a belief system optimistic and robust enough to buttress us in the face of constant reminders that life is fragile and fleeting, and that there is no evidence that anything awaits us afterwards. Religious belief, many philosophers (and some psychologists) have noted, could provide just such a system. It is optimistic, in the sense that most reli- gious belief systems include supernatural entities whose very existence docu- ments the possibility of eternal life, and who in many cases have the power to extend that privilege to mortals as well. And it is robust in the sense that, as has long been noted by anthropologists, there is no known culture, past or present, 6241-334-1pass-PIV-019-r04.indd 331 6241-334-1pass-PIV-019-r04.indd 331 1/7/2014 7:32:23 AM 1/7/2014 7:32:23 AM