AbstractInvestigating the notion that belief in afrerlife (BA) serves the function of helping the individual to deal with fear of death, a study was designed to explore the effect of public commitment to religion, repression‐sensitization, and anticipatory concern with death and dying on BA, and examine the relationship between BA and state anxiety.Fifty students of theology and fifty students of various other subjects responded to a German version of Byrne's R‐S scale, and then were randomly assigned to two conditions: they either worked through Thanatos‐Questionnaire, and thereby were confronted with death and dying for about 15 to 20 minutes, or filled out a questionnaire unrelated to the topic. Thereupon, a BA scale was administered, and at last, subjects responded to a scale measuring state anxiety.The findings of Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) that religiously committed persons are strengthening BA after being confronted with death and dying could not be replicated. However, among subjects with no public commitment, those concerned with death and dying scored significantly lower on BA than those not concerned. This effect was especially observed among students classified as sensitizers. Because changes of BA did not correspond with changes of within cell correlations between BA and state anxiety, an alternative explanation of the findings in terms of dissonance theory is put fo