24-2 A Study on the Relationship between Afterlife Beliefs and Attitudes Toward Life in a Student Population
The purposes of this study were to examine the profile of afterlife beliefs and attitudes toward life of an undergraduate student population in Taiwan, and to understand their relationship. The results of this study would provide suggestions to life education and counseling in university. The participants for this research were selected from the population of two universities in Taiwan. The researcher sampled randomly six departments and selected 300 students to be the subjects of this research. Two hundred and fifty two participants had completed the “Afterlife belief and attitudes toward life” questionnaire. The response rate was 84%. The conclusions of this study were as follows:
1. The belief in afterlife of the undergraduates in Taiwan was hesitant. They had a higher tendency to accept the viewpoint that afterlife was good, peaceful and could get into the cycle of reincarnation, but had lower tendency to believe that man would joined with God or a higher power after death.
2. The attitude toward life of the undergraduates in Taiwan was positive. The undergraduates had more harmonious relationship with external world and less harmonious relationship with their selfhood.
3. The relationship between afterlife beliefs and attitudes toward life was marginally significant.
4. The undergraduates who believed in afterlife had more positive attitude toward life, and this positive relationship would be stronger when the undergraduates believed that afterlife was “good”.
5. Lack of belief in afterlife, was not correlated with a negative attitude towards life.
6. The attitude towards life would be negative only when the undergraduates completely lacked perspective about the afterlife.
Keywords
afterlife belief, attitude toward life, undergraduate.
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