{"id":370,"date":"2009-08-06T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/08\/the-happiness-smile.html"},"modified":"2014-11-22T01:05:58","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T00:05:58","slug":"happiness-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/08\/happiness-smile.html","title":{"rendered":"The happiness smile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Earlier this year I blogged<\/a> about a study done by Luke Galen, a psychologist at Grand Valley State University. Well, he\u2019s now written an account of it in Free Inquiry<\/span> \u2013 you can download it free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study is a survey of the labels non-believers apply to themselves, as well as a survey of their personality types and other demographics.<\/p>\n

One fascinating finding is some evidence that contradicts the widely held assumption that religious people are happiest. What he points out is that, because studies on happiness usually include few atheists, they are often lumped in with the \u2018undecideds\u2019.<\/p>\n

But what his study suggests is that it\u2019s precisely these fence-sitters who are the unhappiest. People who are firm in their convictions \u2013 either firmly religious or firmly non-religious \u2013 tend to be happier. Here\u2019s how Galen puts it:<\/p>\n

When we distinguished strong varieties of nonbelief, such as atheism, from weaker nonbelief, a curvilinear relationship emerged (see Shaver, Lenauer, and Sadd). Those nonbelievers most confident in their nonbelief tended to be the most emotionally healthy, relative to the \u201cfence sitters\u201d who reported more negative emotions. Similarly, life satisfaction was lower among the spirituals relative to the other three belief labels. Therefore, having uncertainty regarding one\u2019s religious views appears to be associated with relatively greater emotional instability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the problem with Galen\u2019s study is that it\u2019s not a random sample of nonbelievers. He recruited members of the Center for Inquiry, who by their nature are going to be \u2018joiners\u2019 rather than loners.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So I took a look at the World Values Survey. This survey took in over 50 countries, and is a random sample of people in those countries. Among a range of questions they asked how happy people were, and how important religion was in their lives.<\/p>\n

I lumped together all the responses from all the countries to get this chart of happiness by \u2018importance of religion\u2019.<\/p>\n

Take a look first at the people who are \u2018very happy\u2019. Sure enough, people for whom religion is not at all important are more likely to be very happy than people in the middle (although people who are religious devotees come out top).<\/p>\n

So it looks like Galen is right!<\/p>\n

But look at the \u2018Quite happy\u2019 line. It\u2019s the mirror image! So being firm in your convictions has the effect of shifting you from being quite happy to very happy. But it doesn\u2019t seem to have much effect on people who are unhappy.<\/p>\n

Now, this is a very top-line analysis. No doubt there are all sorts of demographic reasons that might explain these patterns (they\u2019re probably linked to gender and social status, for a start).<\/p>\n

But I think the important take home is that the naive belief that more religion = more happiness needs to be challenged.<\/p>\n

By the way, the study website is here<\/a>, but still under construction!\"WVS_happiness_atheist\"<\/a>Edit:<\/span> I added a new figure. Basically the same, but divides people according to whether they are religious, not religious, or a confirmed atheist.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________________________________________
\n\"Creative<\/a><\/span>This work by Tom Rees<\/a> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year I blogged about a study done by Luke Galen, a psychologist at Grand Valley State University. Well, he\u2019s now written an account of it in Free Inquiry \u2013 you can download it free here. The study is a survey of the labels non-believers apply to themselves, as well as a survey of […]<\/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-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe happiness smile<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Earlier this year I blogged about a study done by Luke Galen, a psychologist at Grand Valley State University. 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