{"id":119,"date":"2012-02-23T21:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2012\/02\/religion-self-esteem-and-psychological-adjustment.html"},"modified":"2014-11-12T03:41:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T02:41:30","slug":"religion-self-esteem-and-psychological","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2012\/02\/religion-self-esteem-and-psychological.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion, self esteem and psychological adjustment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Much is made of the apparent fact that religious people are happier and better adjusted than the non-religious. However, as regular readers of this blog will know, this is to a large extent an illusion. <\/p>\n

The problem is that most research is done in the USA, where being religious is the cultural norm. If you look further afield<\/a>, you\u2019ll find that religion is only linked to happiness in countries where a lot of people are religious.<\/p>\n

Well, here\u2019s some more on that theme. It\u2019s from Jochen Gebauer (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Constantine Sedikides (University of Southampton, UK) \u2013 who\u2019ve featured here before in a couple of previous posts. This time, they\u2019ve used data from the dating site e-darling \u2013 nearly 190,000 people from 11 European countries.<\/p>\n

The beauty about these dating sites is that they ask people to fill in a lot of information about themselves. <\/p>\n

So, for example, they were able to put together an estimate of each individual\u2019s psychological adjustment, based on the self-ratings of the degree to which they were adaptable, cheerful, optimistic, or resilient (and other similar factors). They also estimated social self-esteem, based on ratings of things like how skilled the individual perceived themselves to be in social situations, and making new friends.<\/p>\n

They threw all these data into a multi-level model, which allows you to tease out the interrelationship of environment (i.e. national characteristics) with personal characteristics. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Take a look at the graph. Each data point in light grey represents a single country. The x-axis is the average religion in a country. The y-axis is the correlation between religion and psychological adjustment (or self-esteem) in that country. <\/p>\n

So, on the far right, we have Turkey (represented by the letter T!). It\u2019s all the way over there because it has the highest average religion.<\/p>\n

And Turkey also has the highest correlation between personal religion and psychological adjustment (and social self esteem).<\/p>\n

Sweden, on the other hand, is on the far left, with the lowest average religiosity. It also has the lowest correlation between person religion and psychological adjustment.<\/p>\n

In fact, there\u2019s a clear, statistically significant trend \u2013 the higher the average strength of religion in a country, the higher the correlation between personal religion and psychological adjustment or social self esteem.<\/p>\n

Now, that\u2019s all very interesting and adds some more flesh to the picture which is revealed by other studies. But here\u2019s what I find particularly interesting about this graphic.<\/p>\n

Even in the least religious countries, where even moderately religious people are in a minority, the correlation is not negative.<\/p>\n

In other words, although non-religious people feel uncomfortable in religious countries, religious people have no problems living in non-religious countries. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s got to be good news for secularists (and religious people).<\/p>\n

\n

\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>
Gebauer, J., Sedikides, C., & Neberich, W. (2012). Religiosity, Social Self-Esteem, and Psychological Adjustment: On the Cross-Cultural Specificity of the Psychological Benefits of Religiosity Psychological Science, 23<\/span> (2), 158-160 DOI: 10.1177\/0956797611427045<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much is made of the apparent fact that religious people are happier and better adjusted than the non-religious. However, as regular readers of this blog will know, this is to a large extent an illusion. The problem is that most research is done in the USA, where being religious is the cultural norm. If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nReligion, self esteem and psychological adjustment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Much is made of the apparent fact that religious people are happier and better adjusted than the non-religious. 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