[HN Gopher] 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to...
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20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life
satisfaction
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-10-23 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psypost.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psypost.org)
| kirse wrote:
| On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who
| need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the
| righteous, but sinners." -Mark 2:17
| pessimizer wrote:
| Is "life satisfaction" a virtue? Are better lives distributed
| to better people?
| mgamache wrote:
| "It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love". - Horace
| Slughorn, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
| chippy wrote:
| There was an interesting little snippet I heard the other day, it
| was something like "the idea that Religions are things to do that
| improve ones life puts it in the self-help section of the
| bookshop." The answer to that I'm more foggy on but its something
| like "religion is something we are called to do, it's not a shelf
| in a bookstore or something to be bought into. It's the entire
| bookstore and it's the city the store is in."
| srcreigh wrote:
| The author has done other studies for different questions.
|
| https://mohsenjoshanloo.weebly.com/publications.html
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " Meta-analyses have pointed to a positive relationship between
| religiosity and a person's evaluation of their life, suggesting
| that people who are more religious tend to feel better about
| their lives. But researcher Mohsen Joshanloo remarks that these
| studies have not offered strong evidence of a causal relationship
| between the two variables. "
|
| E.g. maybe happy people are more likely to be religious, but like
| with most social science, there is no way to test this with the
| scientific method because of ethical reasons.
|
| My favorite stat is that weekly church goers report the highest
| satisfaction in their sex lives.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > My favorite stat is that weekly church goers report the
| highest satisfaction in their sex lives.
|
| Going by kid-count I'd wager we're talking Catholics and
| Mormons.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > My favorite stat is that weekly church goers report the
| highest satisfaction in their sex lives.
|
| That's really interesting. Is there more data? Any differences
| between the sexes? Age?
| User23 wrote:
| Does anyone know what the study author actually means by
| religiosity? I couldn't find the "supplementary material," just a
| three page paper that shows some tables. Without knowing what the
| term means in this context it's hard to interpret the finding.
| Are they lumping together Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims,
| Hindus, Mormons, and every other faith tradition present in the
| USA in any quantity together? I'd be willing to bet that even
| within one of those religions you might find wildly different
| results.
|
| For example Latin Mass attending Catholics who honestly try to
| live the Church's teachings fully may report a different
| happiness level than casual Catholics who show up to Church
| occasionally and don't really live the life that the Church
| teaches them to.
|
| It's fair to differentiate between authentically lived religion
| and more hollow performative religion.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Perfect example of why I firmly believe psychology research is
| trash.
|
| Studied population: 4167 American adults.
|
| Conclusion: All religions are bad.
| noobermin wrote:
| N=4167 for a longitudinal study is fantastic, actually.
| curiousgal wrote:
| For a medical study sure, for a subjective field where
| society and culture play a major role, even N=1e7 of
| individuals _living in the same country_ wouldn 't be enough
| to draw a conclusion on the _entire_ human population.
| jawns wrote:
| I am a member of a religious group whose doctrine, practices,
| culture, etc. are very different from the doctrine, practices,
| and culture of other religious groups. Some people who identify
| as religious are monotheists, others polytheists, others
| pantheists, and still others agnostics or even atheists. (Yup,
| there is such a thing as Christian atheism.)
|
| So I always find it strange when 'religiosity' is used as a
| catch-all personality trait and everyone who identifies as
| religious is lumped together.
|
| I haven't been able to look at the specific six-question set used
| in the study to measure religiosity, but something tells me that
| with only six questions, we can ascertain the impact of a
| person's particular religious beliefs and practices on their life
| in only the vaguest way.
| dash2 wrote:
| Not sure I like the easy assumption here that "panel study" =
| causality. Suppose I get happier. Then I go to church more. The
| use of some complicated-ass Granger-causality-style technique
| also makes me trust it less.
|
| This natural experiment looks more interesting, although it
| exploits just a temporary shock (variation in the length of
| Ramdan):
|
| https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/130/2/615/2330341?login...
|
| "We study the economic effects of religious practices in the
| context of the observance of Ramadan fasting, one of the central
| tenets of Islam. To establish causality, we exploit variation in
| the length of daily fasting due to the interaction between the
| rotating Islamic calendar and a country's latitude. We report two
| key, quantitatively meaningful results: (i) longer Ramadan
| fasting has a negative effect on output growth in Muslim
| countries, and (ii) it increases subjective well-being among
| Muslims. We find evidence that these patterns are consistent with
| a standard club good explanation for the emergence of costly
| religious practices: increased strictness of fasting screens out
| the less committed members, while the more committed respond with
| an increase in their relative levels of participation."
| noobermin wrote:
| Did I misread the article? They just found that it was
| uncorrelated for individuals who became religious during the
| study (that is, temporally there is no effect) but positively
| correlated _between_ people, and neither of those shows
| causality. For the temporal result, it at least negated it
| being causal.
| nassimsoftware wrote:
| I find this study problematic because it fails to take into
| account that life satisfaction is highly dependent on the exact
| moment when the respondents answers the questionnaire even if 10
| years apart.
|
| If I had a bad day and it so happened that it was the day where I
| was supposed to fill in a form on my life satisfaction, my answer
| would probably be very biased regardless if I was religious or
| not.
|
| It also fails to take into account that not all religions are
| based on happiness. Meaning that life satisfaction in this world
| is not the be all and all.
|
| An example is Islam. In Islam this worldly life is considered as
| a test. So you're going to be tested with hardship, afflictions
| and so on. There is also the concept of this being cyclical.
| After hardship comes ease. If you keep steady while you're being
| tested you'll be rewarded with paradise or/and a period of ease
| in this life.
|
| Otherwise if you disobey Allah's commandements and die upon
| disbelief (You did not repent sincerely while you were still
| alive.) you'll likely go to hell.
|
| Here it would be understandable to the believer that their life
| will not be all roses so there life satisfaction may dip at any
| point.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| next up - two thousand year study shows religion is not going
| away. signed - religious person
| Yoric wrote:
| I know a few other religions with prior art on the topic :)
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Honestly, and completely anecdotally, having been raised Catholic
| I would expect it to result in quite the opposite when so much of
| the doctrine is based on guilt. That said before anyone jumps on
| me, also anecdotally, I haven't found any greater life
| satisfaction by not being religious either. You do you.
|
| The article says the study suggests there's not a really strong
| causal relationship in either way which surprises me a little but
| yeah I can see it given the experience.
|
| And If I were to find religion suddenly again now I imagine it
| may only increase life satisfaction based on the fact I have no
| real community at the moment and that I think is probably a more
| interesting study.
|
| How much has external community (i.e. not close friends, partners
| and families) breakdown occurred over the last 40 years and what
| is the effect on our life satisfaction? My grandfather was a part
| of a bunch of men's clubs etc last I checked most of those are
| floundering now.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Blue zone theory suggests religion helps people live longer.
|
| Which is the same as life satisfaction. (If you think people who
| live longer are unhappy or blobs stuck in a bed that's your
| bizarre world)
|
| Blue Zone theory isn't a great theory, but it's very logical. Ie.
| Religious people have support later in life, it's a life long
| hobby anyone can do etc etc.
|
| This 'meta study' of only 4000 is poorly written. I'll assume
| it's because they are Korean and not because in science poorly
| written Journal Articles do better.
|
| You can't read much from this study.
|
| Religiosity means little.
|
| They mention in the study they have no idea about attendance for
| instance which is what matters.
|
| It's not about how strongly you believe. More the fact to use the
| support structure when needed.
| m0zg wrote:
| Having an established social circle leads to greater life
| satisfaction - you don't need a study to know that. And that's
| the main thing churches provide.
| dustingetz wrote:
| The point of religion is to solve civilization-scale game theory
| coordination dilemmas. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a mutually
| beneficial metastable equilibrium but is only stable to the
| extent that it is a universally adopted principle. A lot of
| modern tragedies like climate change can be tackled in this way
| if we can establish universal shared values that apply to all
| people independent of nationality, status and in particular,
| education. It needs to be comprehensible to all 7 billion people
| for them to adopt it, including areas of the world with low
| literacy.
| xabotage wrote:
| It's not the point of religion, it's a side-effect. While
| religion is a remarkably effective control/coercion tool, there
| are more ethical ways to establish universal shared values.
| "Thou Shalt Not Kill" isn't exactly inspirational coming from a
| book filled with god-sanctioned rape, incest, genocide, and
| infanticide. People didn't adopt that principle because
| religion told them to, they adopted it because it allowed them
| to outcompete the primitive societies that didn't.
| Darmody wrote:
| People didn't adopt that principle because religion told them
| to, they adopted it because it allowed them to outcompete the
| primitive societies that didn't.
|
| But the divine nature of mankind makes that commandment more
| powerful because, one, you're killing God's creation and,
| two, it directly comes from God. It is not a simple "yeah,
| lets agree on that".
| xabotage wrote:
| In the end it's just falsely attributing divinity to pro-
| social human programming developed over millennia of
| natural selection. Religion came much later than pro-social
| behavior, and in fact it more resembles "let's agree on
| that": When it serves you, quote the bible verses that
| forbid killing, and when it serves you, quote the verses
| that justify killing indiscriminately.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| >"The point of religion is..."
|
| Citation please
| dustingetz wrote:
| Myerson, Roger B. 2009. "Learning from Schelling's Strategy
| of Conflict." Journal of Economic Literature, 47 (4):
| 1109-25.
| http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/stratofc.pdf
|
| "To focus attention on one equilibrium with no higher appeal,
| it would be best to consult the highest possible authority.
| If the players share a cultural understanding that certain
| unpredictable processes may be used by the fundamental divine
| spirit of the universe to answer questions, and that this
| divinity cannot be bothered about the same question more than
| once, then a recommendation that is based on such a sacred
| randomization can serve as a focal coordination device that
| cannot be appealed to any higher arbitrator. Then the
| oracle's recommendations can be self-enforcing, without any
| further intervention by the divine spirit, provided that the
| recommendations to the players form an equilibrium. Thus the
| focal-point effect can admit a socially significant role for
| oracles and divination, as an effective foundation for social
| coordination. Indeed, when we look for effective focal
| factors, what can command people's attention more than the
| overall pattern of the whole universe? This divine pattern
| can serve as a focal determinant, however, only when players
| have a shared understanding about it can be interpreted into
| a selection among the set of Nash equilibria of their game.
|
| ...
|
| "In any society, it is vital to maintain a broad general
| agreement about who has legitimate authority in any
| situation. Thus, from our earlier remarks about the focal
| power of the divine, we can see why societies may find it
| useful or even essential to call for frequent testimony that
| the local system of rules and authority is compatible with
| the divine pattern of the universe. Although coordination
| within a society can be improved by such belief in the
| universal nature of its principles of justice and legitimate
| authority, such universalization of local law and authority
| makes it harder for people in one society to recognize the
| different forms of justice and authority in other societies
| (see Myerson, 2006). That is, the same forces that help
| people to achieve consistent coordinated expectations in a
| successful society can become forces for inconsistency of
| expectations across societies in international relations.
| Indeed, in international conflicts throughout history, people
| on each side have regularly failed to understand the other
| side's perception of justice in their conflict.
|
| ...
|
| "The focal-point effect may even offer a perspective on some
| ideas of theology, not about the nature of the divine, but
| about how societies use the divine. The focal-point effect is
| about environmental parameters that attract people's
| attention to one of many equilibria, and no aspect of our
| environment has a stronger claim on our attention than the
| divine pattern of the entire universe. Thus, coordination in
| a society can be strengthened when it culturally portrays
| local forms of law and authority as derived from universal
| divine principles."
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Excellent demonstration of the point of the peer-review
| religion.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Except that problem is already solved by a bunch of things like
| empathy and reputation.
|
| The point of religion is to solve civilisation wide
| coordination dilemmas like war. How do you get people to kill
| and die for strangers?
|
| Religion's purpose is to get people to do horrible things not
| to behave nicely. It's used for wars mostly (plus genocides
| etc).
|
| That's why we no longer need it. If we were fighting a ground
| war against a dangerous invading force it would be socially
| useful. But we're not.
|
| This is also why religion has only flourished in places with
| exactly those issues (Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine recently).
|
| Unless the plan for solving climate change is to convince x% of
| people to kill themselves, religion won't help with that any
| more than it helps with poverty or crime.
| version_five wrote:
| I think your analysis is spot on. With respect to the last
| part though:
|
| > Unless the plan for solving climate change is to convince
| x% of people to kill themselves, religion won't help with
| that any more than it helps with poverty or crime.
|
| Climate religion basically is telling people they need to go
| without the comforts of modern society (and generally live in
| some sort of centrally controlled societal construct that
| minimizes individual rights) in the name of some eternal
| paradise. It's not quite as severe as sending people to their
| deaths, but it's the same idea of convincing people to act
| against their own interests (and to let the priests continue
| to do what they want in the name of spreading the word) in
| order to fulfill some divine purpose.
|
| (I should add as a sibling post did, I believe there are many
| positive points to religion as well, I'm responding to your
| post that essentially addresses religion as a coercion (sp?)
| mechanism
| agumonkey wrote:
| you're reducing religion to its dark spots, and I'm not
| religious..
|
| we all have existential crysis, deep fear, doubts, dilemmas.
| These questions are also in religion, now religion was
| probably a huge pile of everything from existence, to social
| life, morality, sexuality and family and yeah converting /
| conquering other people or other faiths.
|
| You don't go to church to gather weapons but to marry,
| celebrate birth and grieve death.
| causi wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder how you square that with results from "are
| you happy?" surveys comparing the religious and irreligious.
| onion2k wrote:
| Believing you are happy and actually being happy are different
| things. Religious people believe that they're happier than
| other people, but they're not.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >Believing you are happy and actually being happy are
| different things
|
| Even if that were true, the two likely wouldn't be
| distinguishable in any meaningful way.
| onion2k wrote:
| Yes they would. If you ask people if they're happy they'll
| say yes. If you actually measure it by observing what
| people do they'll exhibit behavior that shows they're not
| actually happy.
|
| Self-delusion is a well researched topic. There are many
| studies.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > If you actually measure it by observing what people do
| they'll exhibit behavior that shows they're not actually
| happy.
|
| The best part of this notion is the inverse where
| miserable people are doing happy people things.
| [deleted]
| inter_netuser wrote:
| link? is that in the study?
| xabotage wrote:
| Survivorship bias. Especially for high-demand religions,
| answering "no" means admitting the church you make so many
| sacrifices for does absolutely nothing. This leaves those who
| are either too afraid to confront the cognitive dissonance or
| who were already happy in the first place.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Especially for high-demand religions, answering "no" means
| admitting the church you make so many sacrifices for does
| absolutely nothing.
|
| I think there's a chasm or 10 between _declining a
| responsibility_ and _denouncing your faith_.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Where do you get the premise of religion being a happier
| life?
| [deleted]
| xabotage wrote:
| I never said it was, I'm not sure why you think I did.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Your answer of "survivorship bias" hints that you are
| assuming the parent's "are you happy" is a yes.
|
| Assuming for argument's sake, that is.
| xabotage wrote:
| The post title implies religiosity != happiness, the
| parent implied other results might differ, my comment was
| a response to that possibility, for the sake of argument
| as you said.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| For most faithful, the answer would be 'experience'. People
| happy in their faith tend to stay. Those who aren't tend to
| leave eventually.
| dash2 wrote:
| Reverse causality or unobserved confounds. Maybe happy people
| are more likely to become or stay religious. Maybe living in an
| area with strong community makes you happier and you also get
| dragged along to church (but the two do not influence each
| other).
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