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$\"$ <\/a><\/div>\n

But is it cause or effect? Is it that religion helps people to be socially engaged (by encouraging them to take part in community events, perhaps, or by making them feel part of a group), or is it that religion attracts a certain kind of person? There\u2019s been a few studies into that in the past, and they\u2019ve come up with mixed results. <\/p>\n

James Benjamin Schuurmans-Stekhoven (Charles Sturt University, Australia) has tried a different approach. He\u2019s looked to see whether the personality of religious people might explain their social support.<\/p>\n

He recruited 219 Australians (70% women, average 45 years) and asked them about their spirituality (questions like: \u201cI believe in a universal power, a god\u201d, \u201cIn the last 24 h, I have personally spent 30 min in prayer, meditation or contemplation,\u201d and \u201cI have a set of principles that govern my life\u201d. It\u2019s a bit more vague than your regular religion questionnaire, but it was chosen in order to pick up religiousness of all types and creeds, as well as to pick up on the importance of a shared world view in making social connections.<\/p>\n

He asked them about their perceptions about the social support they got from friends, family and \u2018others\u2019, and also about their personality (specifically their agreeableness and conscientiousness).<\/p>\n

What he found was that, after correcting for age, gender and education, their spirituality was a significant predictor of social support. However, he also found that conscientiousness and, especially, agreeableness, were also good predictors of social support. <\/p>\n

In fact, personality was a better predictor of social support than spirituality. What\u2019s more, when Schuurmans-Stekhoven put both factors into the model, the contribution of spirituality became insignificant.<\/p>\n

What that suggests is that it\u2019s personality, not spirituality, that explains why religious people have more social support. That conclusion is reinforced by Schuurmans-Stekhoven\u2019s additional finding that many non-spiritual people were also highly conscientious and agreeable, and reported high levels of social support.<\/p>\n

Now, Shuurmans-Stekhoven is quick to point out that this is just an observational analysis. That means the correlation could be spurious, or could be due to some other, unidentified factor. But his point is that most of the other studies done have exactly the same flaws (and worse). He\u2019s tested the claim that spirituality leads to increased social support (based on correlations), and found it wanting.<\/p>\n

Even so, what these results suggest is that spirituality, far from being a cause of sociability, actually attracts sociable people (or at least, a subset of them).<\/p>\n

$\"ResearchBlogging.org\"$ <\/a><\/span>
Schuurmans-Stekhoven, J. (2013). Spirit or Fleeting Apparition? Why Spirituality\u2019s Link with Social Support Might Be Incrementally Invalid Journal of Religion and Health<\/span> DOI: 10.1007\/s10943-013-9801-3<\/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":"