Religiosity seems to moderate death anxiety, but not in all groups. The two constructs apparently are related mostly among those who are high in intrinsic religiosity or low in death anxiety, or both. Age seems to be an important factor in the development of this relationship. Samples from Kuwait (N = 294) and the United States (N = 279) completed instruments to assess death anxiety and intrinsic religious motivation. The Kuwaitis scored much higher than the Americans in both. State anxiety may have influenced the Kuwaitis’ death anxiety scores. Relationships and cross-cultural differences are examined.

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Using a standardized Arabic version of the Templer Death Anxiety Scale with Egyptian students (214 males and 214 females), five factors were extracted which corresponded to those reported for several cultures in Asia, Europe, Africa, and America. Means for the Egyptian students of both sexes were significantly higher than those reported in Arab and western cultures. Egyptian female students scored significantly higher than males. The first two factors were mostly comprised of items relating to cognitive/affective components of death and life experiences. These observations support the universality of structures within death anxiety across culture and gender.

Cross-cultural comparisons of norms derived from research on Death Anxiety are valid as long as they provide existential validity. Existential validity is not empirically derived like construct validity. It is an understanding of being human unto death. It is the realization that death is imminent. It is the inner sense that provides a responder to death anxiety scales with a valid expression of his or her sense about the prospect of dying. It can be articulated in a life review by a disclosure of one's ontology. This article calls upon psychologists who develop death anxiety scales to disclose their presuppositions about death before administering a questionnaire. By disclosing his or her ontology a psychologist provides a means of disclosing his or her intentionality in responding to the items. This humanistic paradigm allows for an interactive participation between investigator and subject. Lester, Templer, and Abdel-Khalek (2006-2007) enriched psychology with significant empirical data on several correlates of death anxiety. But all scientists, especially psychologists, will always have alternative interpretations of the same empirical fact pattern. Empirical data is limited by the affirmation of the consequent limitation. A phenomenology of language and communication makes existential validity a necessary step for a broader understanding of the meaning of death anxiety.

Construct validity is the hallmark of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (1970), which has generated a healthy stream of research of paramount importance in the USA and all over the world. This paper contends that scores on this scale provide valuable scientific knowledge on group norms. To expand the concept of death anxiety it is necessary to supplement empirical with qualitative research. Persons with the same scores may show qualitatively different fears of death, and vice versa. Total reliance on empirical scales may not disclose the depth of bipolar meaning in a "life-death anxiety." Templer's scale is a mixture of fears, phobias, and obsessions with thoughts of illness, cancer, heart disease, and wars. A bipolar "life-death anxiety" continuum requires phenomenology to reach beyond the 15 items to the process of "experiencing." The scale addresses "thoughts" about the death of others even though its items are cast in the first person singular. This provides group norms of a "cognitive-affective" construct, with limited generality cross-culturally. Means do not disclose fully meaningful comparisons between persons or cultures. Death Anxiety as an existential anticipatory mode of "being-in-the-world" is embedded in a personal/genetic/cultural matrix that may vary individually and culturally.