Does she still love and feel hungry? Afterlife continuity beliefs and religion across 24 countries

Many people believe that certain mental states, such as love, continue after physical death. However, the prevalence of such ``continuity beliefs'' and their relationship with culture and religious belief remains unclear. In the current preregistered study we draw on a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (24 countries, N = 10,195) to systematically quantify cultural variation in tendencies for continuity beliefs after death and the precedence of mental state continuity (e.g., love) over bodily state continuity (e.g., hunger). Our findings partly replicate previous work suggesting that (mental) afterlife continuity beliefs are cross-culturally prevalent, with individual religious beliefs predicting more continuity judgments, especially for mental states. Furthermore, our study reveals that an experimental manipulation inducing a religious framing amplifies continuity judgments tendencies relative to a secular framing. At the same time, however, the modal response across most countries was the cessation of all mental and bodily states after death. In addition, propositional self-reported afterlife beliefs (e.g., about heaven) were more prevalent than continuity judgments as measured using a vignette task. Overall, these data reveal considerable variation within and between cultures in continuity judgments, with both materialist beliefs and mental continuity beliefs being widespread.