Plenty of studies over the last two decades have found that people who have some sort of religious faith tend to have somewhat better psychological well-being than those who aren’t religious. These results have been obtained not only in the United States, which stands out among developed countries for its high levels of religiosity but for a number of other countries as well. These findings have even made their way into introductory psychology textbooks, where the message is clear: Being religious boosts mental health.
For those of religious faith, this conclusion no doubt seems obvious. But what does it mean for the growing percentage of the world’s population that has rejected religion, or at least has no interest in it? Have agnostics and atheists lost out on an important component of their psychological well-being for the sake of winning a philosophical argument?
According to psychologist Mohsen Joshanloo, researchers and religious leaders alike may be giving religious belief more credit than it deserves. In an article he recently published in the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, Joshanloo lays out his reasoning and provides analyses of data collected from a major 20-year survey.
Correlation Does Not Imply Causation
Joshanloo starts with the basic finding that people of religious faith tend to report slightly higher levels of subjective well-being. That is, they claim to be somewhat happier and better adjusted than those without faith. Even Joshanloo’s own data analyses yield this same result.
The challenge, rather, is how to interpret this finding. The interpretation that most people rush to is that having religious faith somehow makes people experience better psychological health. Or, to put this in simple terms, religion causes subjective well-being. This is the situation that is often implied, if not outright stated, in journal articles, psychology textbooks, and pop psychology websites.
This interpretation, though, goes far beyond what the data tell us. What has been established is a correlation between religiosity and subjective well-being. However, as anyone who has ever taken a course in statistics will tell you, correlation does not imply causation.
That is to say, it could very well be that religiosity causes subjective well-being. But it could also be the other way around, namely that subjective well-being causes religiosity. In other words, when you’re generally satisfied with life, you tend to feel more religiously inclined.
Even more likely than either of these two scenarios, however, is the situation in which one or more other factors are correlated with both religiosity and subjective well-being. For example, it’s well documented that having a network of social relationships is an important component of psychological health.
To the extent that practicing a religious faith provides you with a community of like-minded individuals that you can develop meaningful friendships with, people of religious faith would tend to have high levels of subjective well-being. Note, however, that it’s not being religious itself that leads to better psychological health. Rather, it’s the social interaction that comes with practicing a religion that does this.
Testing for a Causal Relationship
All studies on this topic to date have done between-person analyses in which the researchers compared religious and non-religious people on various measures of subjective well-being. Some have even been “time-lag” studies that look at religiosity at an early point in time and subjective well-being some years later. Still, none of these can go beyond demonstrating a correlation.
As Joshanloo points out, the only way to absolutely demonstrate causation is through a true experiment. For example, we could give one group of newborns a religious upbringing and another a non-religious upbringing—while keeping all other aspects of their developmental environment the same—to see which group has greater subjective well-being as adults. Of course, this is an impossible experiment to perform, so we need to approach the question of causality from a different angle.
What makes Joshanloo’s study unique is that he performs a within-person analysis instead. Drawing on data from a large survey in which participants responded at three different points in time over a 20-year period, Joshanloo looked for changes in religiosity and subjective well-being over time for each individual.
Joshanloo found that a change in religiosity did not predict a change in subjective well-being, even at a time lag. For example, a change in religiosity from Time 1 to Time 2 wasn’t followed by a change in subjective well-being from Time 2 to Time 3. He also ran the analysis in reverse, testing whether a change in subjective well-being was associated with a change in religiosity, with the same null result.
One can imagine a person who finds Jesus and becomes a happier person as a result. Likewise, it’s easy to think of someone who feels disgruntled with their religion and is unhappy about life in general. In his within-person analysis, however, Joshanloo found no evidence of a relationship between changes in religiosity and changes in subjective well-being within individuals.
Other Factors Drive the Relationship
What this finding tells us is that there’s no good reason to believe that having religious faith by itself improves psychological health. Instead, it’s more likely that other factors associated with religious faith are driving this association.
In fact, researchers have identified several likely candidates. As we already mentioned, religious practice provides a community for social support. It also provides a sense of purpose in life as well as the sense of awe that comes from knowing you are part of something greater than yourself.
None of these elements of subjective well-being are the exclusive domain of organized religion. But while those of faith have these readily provided for them, each person who chooses not to practice a religion will have to make the effort to find community, meaning in life, and a sense of higher purpose on their own. I have to wonder if this fact alone helps explain why people of faith tend to report somewhat higher levels of subjective well-being.
Source link : https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/talking-apes/202408/does-being-religious-promote-well-being
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Publish date : 2024-10-08 21:08:36
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