Atheists and the strongly religious have something in common.
Both are among those least afraid of dying.
That is one of the findings of a recent international study, with strong University of Otago links, which has attracted international media interest.
Prof Jamin Halberstadt, of the Otago psychology department, is one of the study's authors, and its first author is Dr Jonathan Jong, the latter undertaking research at both Coventry and Oxford universities, in Britain.
His earlier Otago PhD thesis was co-supervised by Prof Halberstadt.
It has often been suggested religious people may be less fearful of death than non-believers, but the recent study shows a different, more complex picture.
The ''meta-analysis'' study, published in the journal Religion, Brain and Behaviour, shows atheists also have a somewhat reduced fear of death.
The study is based on 100 relevant articles, published between 1961 and 2014, containing information about 26,000 people worldwide.
In mixed results, 18% of the studies found religious people were actually more afraid of death than the non-religious.
Prof Halberstadt's research was supported by the Marsden Fund, and he was ''surprised'' at the international media interest, given the latest study involved ''a summary of other studies''.
However, the topic was ''really interesting''.
The study also made the ''counterintuitive'' point that, in ''dealing with the big issues like death and religion'', some non-believers could also ''achieve some of the same relief'' from fear about death, he said.
Prof Murray Rae, of the Otago department of theology and religion, said the findings about strong believers and atheists were ''pretty much'' what he would have expected.
This partly reflected that ''both groups have a higher level of confidence'' over death and its context.
Because atheists believed death was simply ''the end of the road'', from that viewpoint ''there's nothing much to be feared''.
