You may be attacking a straw man there: I'm a firm believer in an afterlife, but I've never heard it argued from the basis of "people need hope." Generally, people who make that kind of argument have taken a web of beliefs, say from a particular religion, scratched out most of them, and attempted to prop up the rest on some other basis. Since the old conclusion is there before the arguments, they're almost guaranteed to be vacuous.

Christians, at least, couch their belief in an afterlife with phrases like "if there is no resurrection, then Christ was not raised..." I assume other religions have similar kinds of reasonings. The "biased" ones seem to be more those who have no particular religious belief, and yet still want to retain an expectation of an afterlife.