Belief in afterlife appears to modulate alpha-amylase reactivity to mortality salience

Terror Management Theory (TMT), a widely popular psychological research topic, suggests people use culture, more specifically religion, as a buffer against fearing death; however, no physiological data has ever been given to support this claim. The goal of this study was to test TMT against physiological data, namely salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase levels, two known stress hormones. Participants spoke about either dental pain (the control condition) or their own death (the experimental condition) for approximately five minutes. Belief in afterlife was measured via self-report questionnaire prior to this. Three saliva samples were taken during the study, and then analyzed for cortisol and alpha-amylase using Salimetrics' enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Fifteen minutes after speaking, alpha-amylase levels were lowest for those who were high in belief in afterlife and highest for those who had low belief in afterlife, with a roughly linear distribution between the two ends of the spectrum (p