Belief in Afterlife Scale

1. Abstract

The Belief in Afterlife Scale (BA Scale) is an influential psychometric instrument developed by Michael Osarchuk and Sherman J. Tatz in 1973 to assess the extent to which an individual endorses the premise that human consciousness or personal existence continues in some form following biological death. Diverging from dogmatic or denomination-specific religiosity inventories, the BA Scale was purposefully constructed to operate as a non-sectarian, construct-focused assessment tool. Its neutral phrasing enables equivalent endorsement across diverse theological paradigms, including orthodox Western monotheisms (e.g., Christian, Jewish, or Islamic eschatology), reincarnation frameworks (e.g., Eastern traditions), and generalized spiritual or metaphysical philosophies. The instrument was originally engineered in two parallel 10-item formats—Form A (containing seven reverse-scored items) and Form B (containing six reverse-scored items)—calibrated using an 11-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (total disagreement) to 10 (total agreement). Total scores are calculated by summing item responses after reverse-scoring items rejecting afterlife concepts, yielding aggregate scores ranging from 0 to 100, where higher scores signify stronger post-mortem continuity convictions.

Psychometric evaluations demonstrate that the scale possesses sound measurement properties. Item selection was driven by classical item discrimination procedures that isolated the top-discriminating statements across extreme score quintiles from an initial 50-item pool. Empirical validation studies demonstrate robust construct, convergent, and experimental validity. Notably, the scale exhibited sensitivity to mortality salience manipulations in experimental death-threat conditions, correlated significantly with single-item afterlife self-ratings (r = .428, p < .001), and demonstrated nuanced relationships with multidimensional death anxiety inventories, including the Lester Fear of Death Scale and the Collett-Lester Fear of Death of Others subscale (r = .44, p < .01). Internal consistency analysis by Casebolt (1992) yielded a Cronbach’s alpha of .89 for Form A, establishing strong scale reliability. The instrument remains a foundational measure in thanatology, the psychology of religion, existential psychology, and bereavement studies.

2. Keywords

Belief in Afterlife Scale, BA Scale, Osarchuk and Tatz, death anxiety, thanatology, Terror Management Theory, mortality salience, afterlife beliefs, eschatology, psychometrics, fear of death, existential psychology

3. Authors

The Belief in Afterlife Scale was devised and standardized by Michael Osarchuk and Sherman J. Tatz. At the time of the instrument’s inception and validation in 1973, both investigators were affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the C. W. Post Center of Long Island University in Greenvale, New York. Their seminal publication introduced the instrument within experimental social psychology to examine how the induced fear of death systematically influences metaphysical convictions and mortality-buffering belief systems.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Belief in Afterlife Scale is to quantify the strength and conviction of an individual’s belief that personal existence transcends physical cessation, independent of specific denominational affiliations or theological systems. Prior to its construction, researchers examining existential coping mechanisms were frequently constrained to using omnibus religiosity measures, church attendance records, or doctrinally rigid scales centered exclusively on Judeo-Christian concepts of heaven, hell, and divine judgment. Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) recognized that such tools conflated institutional religious participation with ontological convictions regarding the continuation of human consciousness.

Consequently, the BA Scale was engineered to resolve these methodological limitations through several focused applications:

• Experimental Social Psychology and Thanatology: The scale was designed to function in pretest-posttest laboratory paradigms examining acute death awareness, mortality salience, and existential threat. Having two parallel forms (Form A and Form B) permits repeated-measures experimental designs without the confounding effects of memory or item-specific practice.
• Terror Management Research: The scale serves as an empirical instrument to evaluate how symbolic and literal immortality strivings serve as cognitive buffers against paralyzing existential terror, prefiguring key tenets of Terror Management Theory (TMT).
• Grief, Bereavement, and Palliative Psychology: In clinical and health psychology contexts, the scale is utilized to investigate how belief in an afterlife moderates complicated grief, bereavement distress, and end-of-life psychological adjustment among terminally ill patients and their families (e.g., Smith, Range, & Ulmer, 1992).
• Cross-Tradition Existential Research: Because items avoid references to confessional dogmas (such as the bodily resurrection of Christ, purgatory, or ancestral spirits), the instrument provides a universal metric suitable for comparing secular, agnostic, spiritual-but-not-religious, and orthodox cohorts.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the BA Scale is ontological afterlife belief, defined as the subjective certainty that human identity, personal consciousness, spiritual essence, or experiential life continues in some recognizable state following physical death. In clinical and existential psychology, this construct operates as a core protective schema that addresses the fundamental human conflict between the instinct for self-preservation and the cognitive awareness of inevitable bodily decay.

Core Dimensions of the Construct

Although the BA Scale was developed primarily as a unidimensional instrument, it taps into several conceptual facets that define personal continuity beliefs:

• Absolute Continuity vs. Total Extinction: The fundamental polarity of the construct contrasts the survival of the self against existential annihilation. Statements such as “Humans die in the sense of ‘ceasing to exist'” and “Earthly existence is the only existence we have” measure adherence to ontological naturalism, physicalism, and philosophical annihilationism versus post-mortem dualism.
• Relational and Interpersonal Continuity: A central component of afterlife conviction is the anticipation of relational reunion. Items such as “We will never be united with those deceased whom we knew and loved” assess whether respondents anticipate post-mortem attachment continuity, which directly influences bereavement resolution and grief coping.
• Epistemic and Cognitive Certainty: The scale assesses how individuals process the conceptual feasibility of an afterlife. Items evaluate whether post-mortem survival is viewed as a logical impossibility beyond comprehension, a mere “figment of someone’s imagination,” or an intuitive ontological necessity.
• Consolatory Utility and Meaning-Making: The construct encompasses the role of afterlife expectations in alleviating grief surrounding premature or tragic deaths. Affirming that “some comfort can be found in knowing that in some way the deceased is still existing” taps into the cognitive-affective coping utility of metaphysical continuity.

The construct deliberately excludes structural, moral, or geographical parameters of the hereafter (such as retribution, damnation, heavenly rewards, or cycles of karmic transmigration). By isolating the existential variable of survival versus cessation, the scale measures the core psychological conviction unclouded by extraneous theological doctrines.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the BA Scale is grounded in existential psychology, cognitive defense mechanisms, and psychodynamic thanatology, later formalized within Terror Management Theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). The foundational premise of this framework is that humans possess advanced cognitive capabilities that allow them to project into the future and comprehend the inevitability of their own demise. This awareness generates existential dread and anxiety, which must be cognitively managed to prevent emotional impairment.

Ernest Becker and the Denial of Death

The development of the BA Scale coincided with the publication of Ernest Becker‘s seminal work, The Denial of Death (1973). Becker argued that human culture, religion, and personal belief systems are primarily organized to manage the existential terror of mortality. According to this framework, belief in an afterlife represents a system of literal immortality. Unlike symbolic immortality (achieved through progeny, artistic creation, or institutional legacies), literal immortality directly denies the finality of biological cessation by asserting the persistence of the conscious self.

Mortality Salience and Defensive Bolstering

Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) contextualized the BA Scale within experimental cognitive defense models. Drawing upon Leon Festinger‘s cognitive dissonance theory and defensive adaptation hypotheses, they posited that when mortality becomes acutely salient, individuals who rely on afterlife beliefs to maintain psychological stability will defensively increase and reaffirm those beliefs to buffer against existential anxiety. Conversely, presenting non-death-related threats (e.g., physical pain via electric shock) should not trigger the same defensive cognitive response, because general threats do not challenge an individual’s defense against total annihilation.

Later, Terror Management theorists incorporated Osarchuk and Tatz’s findings as foundational empirical evidence demonstrating that cultural worldviews and metaphysical convictions function as anxiety-buffering systems. When mortality salience is activated, individuals exhibit compensatory worldview defense, selectively reinforcing their conviction in post-mortem existence.

7. Validity

The BA Scale has been evaluated across multiple forms of validity, including construct, experimental, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity across several decades of empirical thanatological research.

Experimental and Construct Validity

The primary validation study conducted by Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) utilized a sophisticated 2 × 3 factorial design manipulating baseline belief levels (High BA vs. Low BA) and threat conditions (Death Threat, Electric Shock Threat, and a neutral Control condition):

• Death Threat Induction: Participants were exposed to actuarial mortality statistics and vivid visual stimuli detailing the probability of premature death within their demographic group.
• Shock Threat Manipulation: Participants were informed they would receive a series of painful electrical shocks.
• Control Condition: Participants engaged in a neutral motor task with a child’s toy.

Analysis of pretest-to-posttest change scores revealed that only participants in the High BA × Death Threat experimental cell demonstrated a statistically significant increase in afterlife belief scores, exhibiting an average increase of +9.5 points on the 100-point scale. Participants in the shock-threat and control conditions showed no significant shifts. This confirmed the construct validity of the BA Scale as a specific psychological defense against death-related anxiety, rather than a generalized reaction to physical discomfort.

Subsequent experimental studies yielded more nuanced results. Littlefield and Fleming (1984) exposed 87 participants to a death-threat film (death by fire), a general anxiety film, or an innocuous film over a three-week interval, observing an unexpected decrease in BA scores among the death-threat group. Schoenrade (1989) manipulated confrontation with one’s own mortality via an audio recording describing unexpected death; while participants with high afterlife belief demonstrated significant shifts in positive and negative death perspectives on the Spilka et al. (1977) Death Perspectives Scale, their aggregate BA scores remained stable, suggesting that deeply established metaphysical convictions may demonstrate ceiling or stabilization effects under certain conditions.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

The convergent validity of the BA Scale is supported by several notable relationships:

• Direct Self-Rating Estimates: Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) found a substantial positive correlation between BA total scores and subjects’ self-rated estimates of afterlife belief recorded on a 1–100 scale in 5-point intervals: r(309) = .428, p < .001.
• Correlation with Fear of Death Measures: Berman and Hays (1973) administered Form A alongside the Lester (1967) Fear of Death Scale to 300 undergraduate students, identifying a significant positive correlation (r = .24, p < .01). This finding suggests that higher fear of mortality is associated with elevated compensatory afterlife beliefs.
• Multidimensional Death Fear Subscales: Kurlychek (1976) evaluated 40 older adults (aged 60 and above) using the BA Scale and the Collett and Lester (1969) Fear of Death Scale. While BA scores did not correlate significantly with Fear of Death of Self, Fear of Dying of Self, or Fear of Dying of Others, they showed a significant correlation with the Fear of Death of Others subscale (r = .44, p < .01). Kurlychek interpreted this finding as evidence that witnessing the death of a close other serves as a salient reminder of mortality, which is cognitively buffered by affirming post-mortem continuity.

Known-Groups Validity

Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) observed distinct variations across religious orientations: Roman Catholic (M = 61.4) and Protestant (M = 62.5) participants scored significantly higher than agnostics/atheists (M = 48.9) and Jewish participants (M = 42.4). Smith, Range, and Ulmer (1992) confirmed the instrument’s known-groups utility in a clinical bereavement sample of 121 individuals who had lost a loved one within the previous seven years, finding an average response score of 4.3 on a 1–5 scale, which reflected elevated post-mortem continuity convictions among grieving cohorts.

8. Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of the Belief in Afterlife Scale includes assessments of parallel-form equivalence and internal consistency.

Parallel-Form Equivalence and Pretest Distributions

Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) standardized Form A and Form B across an initial validation cohort of 311 introductory psychology students (156 completing Form A, 155 completing Form B). The empirical distributions demonstrated high structural equivalence across the two forms:

• Form A: Mean (M) = 53.00, Standard Deviation (SD) = 24.41 (N = 156)
• Form B: Mean (M) = 51.00, Standard Deviation (SD) = 25.57 (N = 155)
• Aggregate Mean across Forms: M = 52.00, indicating balanced baseline values and dispersion across both forms.

Gender-stratified comparisons demonstrated baseline equivalence across male (M = 52.3) and female (M = 51.4) participants in the original cohort, although Berman and Hays (1973) subsequently observed higher mean scores among females in a sample of 300 college students.

Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha)

Although the initial 1973 study did not report internal consistency metrics, subsequent psychometric research established high reliability. In an experimental investigation of terror management dynamics, Casebolt (1992) administered Form A to 60 introductory psychology students, obtaining a Cronbach’s alpha of .89. This indicates strong internal consistency, confirming that the ten items function cohesively to measure the underlying afterlife belief construct.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural development of the BA Scale followed empirical item-selection procedures aligned with Classical Test Theory (CTT), followed by confirmatory investigations into its dimensional architecture.

Item Discrimination and Scale Assembly

Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) initiated scale construction by generating an item pool of 50 candidate statements reflecting belief or non-belief in an afterlife. This pool was administered to 169 male and female undergraduates at the C. W. Post Center of Long Island University. The analytic selection sequence included the following steps:

1. Extreme-Group Stratification: Total baseline scores across all 50 items were summed, and respondents were categorized into quintiles to isolate the upper 20% (highest afterlife belief) and lower 20% (lowest afterlife belief) cohorts.
2. Item Discrimination Index (D): Individual item sensitivity was determined by computing discrimination indices between the extreme quintiles. The 20 items exhibiting the highest discrimination powers were retained.
3. Parallel-Form Partitioning: The 20 selected items were randomly distributed into two 10-item parallel forms (Form A and Form B), balancing positively phrased and reverse-scored items.

Factor Structure and Dimensionality

The scale was developed to assess a single, primary dimension: General Belief in Post-Mortem Existence. Subsequent factor-analytic evaluations of similar afterlife inventories have confirmed that when items are formulated to assess post-mortem survival without theological elaboration, the variance is predominantly accounted for by a strong general factor.

However, psychometric research that includes reverse-scored items often reveals methodological artifacts in factor analyses. Because Form A contains seven reverse-scored items and Form B contains six, exploratory factor analyses can occasionally yield a two-factor solution reflecting an Endorsement of Continuity factor and an Affirmation of Annihilation/Physicalism factor. These distinctions generally reflect item-wording directionality rather than distinct psychological constructs. When method factors are statistically controlled, the scale exhibits unidimensionality, supporting the calculation of a single summed composite score.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Belief in Afterlife Scale is a self-report paper-and-pencil or computerized psychological instrument. Below are the key structural specifications for Form A:

• Construct Assessed: Generalized belief in the continuation of personal consciousness/life following physical death.
• Item Count: 10 statements (Form A).
• Response Format: 11-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (Total Disagreement) to 10 (Total Agreement).
• Scoring Range: 0 to 100 points.
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Directly Scored Items: Items 2, 6, and 9 are phrased positively. The score recorded is the numeric value endorsed (0 to 10).
  • Reverse-Scored Items: Items 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10 reflect non-belief, annihilation, or skepticism. These items are reversed using the formula: (text{Item Score} = 10 – text{Endorsed Value}).
  • Total Score Calculation: Sum the recorded values of all 10 items after reverse-scoring. Higher overall scores indicate greater belief in post-mortem survival.
• Alternative Administration Protocols: Some researchers have adapted the response format to standard 5-point Likert scales (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree; e.g., Smith, Range, & Ulmer, 1992) or 1–11 scales (Schoenrade, 1989). In such cases, scoring is typically expressed as an item mean rather than a summed total.
• Reading Level and Target Population: The vocabulary of the items (e.g., existentialists, premature, comprehension) requires an adult reading comprehension level, making the scale unsuitable for young children or populations with limited reading literacy without appropriate item modifications.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Belief in Afterlife Scale was originally published in 1973 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a journal published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The full text of the items and scale structure was placed in the public scientific domain via its publication in Osarchuk and Tatz (1973). The instrument may be utilized for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research purposes without licensing fees, provided the original authors and publication are formally cited. Researchers seeking to reproduce the scale in commercial formats or standardized assessment batteries should consult the American Psychological Association’s permissions office.

12. References

• Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. Free Press.
• Berman, A. L., & Hays, J. E. (1973). Relation between death anxiety, belief in afterlife, and locus of control. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 41(2), 318. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0035640
• Casebolt, J. (1992). The effect of terror management and the threatening or bolstering of afterlife beliefs on attributional derogation of AIDS victims [Unpublished raw data].
• Collett, L. J., & Lester, D. (1969). The fear of death and the fear of dying. The Journal of Psychology, 72(2), 179–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1969.10543496
• Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public Self and Private Self (pp. 189–212). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10
• Kurlychek, R. T. (1976). Level of belief in afterlife and four categories of fear of death in a sample of 60+-year-olds. Psychological Reports, 38(1), 228. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1976.38.1.228
• Lester, D. (1967). Fear of death of suicidal persons. Psychological Reports, 20(3), 1077–1078. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1967.20.3.1077
• Littlefield, C., & Fleming, S. (1984). Measuring fear of death: A multidimensional approach. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 15(2), 131–138. https://doi.org/10.2190/0N2C-V006-0D3X-H458
• Osarchuk, M., & Tatz, S. J. (1973). Effect of induced fear of death on belief in afterlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(2), 256–260. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034774
• Schoenrade, P. A. (1989). When I die… : Belief in afterlife as a response to mortality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15(1), 91–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167289151009
• Smith, P. G., Range, L. M., & Ulmer, A. (1992). Belief in afterlife as a buffer in suicidal and other bereavement. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 24(3), 217–225. https://doi.org/10.2190/XU7W-6831-2826-66N9
• Spilka, B., Stout, L., Minton, B., & Sizemore, D. (1977). Death and personal faith: A psychometric investigation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 16(2), 169–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385747

13. Items of the Scale