Fear of commitment of self-help, Harvard psychologist Deborah DePaulo has written books such as "Singleism" on the stigmatization of single people. The use of the term "fear" or "phobia" imparts an inherent linguistic bias. It recasts specific lifestyle decisions (such as bachelorhood vs. marriage, or a conscious decision to remain childfree by choice) implicitly as generalised, irrational phobias while failing to identify, describe or address an individual's specific motives. For instance, the men's rights movement, citing high divorce rates and expensive alimony and legal costs, would speak not in terms of "fear of commitment" but of "marriage strike" to reflect their position that
Fear "religious concern". In a 2006 study of white, Christian men and women the hypothesis was tested that traditional, church-centered religiousness and de-institutionalized spiritual seeking are ways of approaching fear of death in old age. Both religiousness and spirituality were related to positive psychosocial functioning, but only church-centered religiousness protected subjects against the fear of death. Fear of the unknown or irrational fear is caused by negative thinking (worry) which arises from anxiety accompanied with a subjective sense of apprehension or dread. Irrational fear shares a common neural pathway with other fears, a pathway that engages the nervous system to mobilize