Unrelated studies come to the same conclusion
“Religious communities are very social. Just being a member of a religious group connects people to others, and it may be this social connection that can make people happier,” University of Illinois psychology professor Jesse Preston says.
Preston and colleagues just published a paper that studied nearly 2 million tweets from Christians and atheists—self-identified through their tweet content. The conclusions were that Christians had more positive and less negative tweet content than that created by atheists. “If religious people are indeed happier than nonreligious people, differences in social support and thinking style may help to explain why,” said University of Illinois graduate student Ryan Ritter.
Preston also notes that “atheists had a more analytical thinking style in their tweets than Christians, which at extremes can make people less happy.” Christians appear to be happier than atheists on Twitter, but “this does not mean atheists are unhappy overall or doomed to be miserable. If religion improves happiness indirectly through other factors, those benefits could also be found outside religious groups.”
Previous research has found a positive association between religion and well-being among Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. And two unrelated studies also published recently found that going to synagogue is good for health and happiness. The new research shows that Israeli Jewish adults who attend synagogue regularly, pray often, and consider themselves religious are significantly healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts. They also report greater satisfaction with life.
“These findings nicely reinforce the inherited Jewish folk wisdom that going to shul (synagogue) is ‘good for you,'” says Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D.
Commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being, Levin says. We’ve seen before that religion can improve self-esteem and self-control, and spirituality is important for overall wellness even if it isn’t tied to a specific religion.
These studies are interesting, as they measure happiness through the lens of the social and habitual aspects of religion. Can you find happiness through other social and habitual actions?
Image: Some rights reserved by DVIDSHUB