Within-person relationship between religiosity and life satisfaction: A 20-year study

Is religion beneficial for mental health? A 9-year longitudinal study

Background/Objective

This study aimed to investigate the within-person and between-person effects of religious variables on mental health and vice versa.

Method

Using a large sample of adults residing in Germany from the GESIS Panel study (N = 8146), the random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used. Data on six dimensions of religion (i.e., membership in a religious community; attendance at a place of worship; frequency of prayers; importance of religion in life; and participation in a religious organization) and three indicators of mental health (i.e., depression symptoms, happiness, and life satisfaction) were collected.

Results

The findings revealed that there is almost no evidence of lagged effects of religion on mental health and limited evidence regarding the role of mental health in influencing the dimensions of religion. Moreover, at the between-person level, there was some evidence of significant covariance between the trait-like components, indicating stable, trait-like differences between persons on religion and mental health.

Conclusions

The beneficial effect of religion on mental health may have been exaggerated in previous research.

Temporal associations between depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and satisfaction with family life: A 15-year study

Introduction

In South Korea, depression has significant economic and social impacts, including increased healthcare costs and a relatively high suicide rate. Reducing the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the general population is therefore an important public health goal in this country. To achieve this goal, it is essential to identify the factors that may increase or decrease the risk of depression. This study examined the association between depressive symptoms and two indicators of wellbeing: self-esteem and satisfaction with family life. A primary objective was to examine whether higher self-esteem and satisfaction with family life could predict a decrease in depressive symptoms in the future.

Methods

A large representative sample was used, collected over a 15-year period with annual lags. The random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used to examine reciprocal associations between the 3 variables at the within-person level.

Results

All within-person effects were found to be reciprocal, significant, and in the expected direction. Thus, within-person deviations in any of the variables are associated with future within-person deviations in the other variables.

Discussion

These results suggest that indicators of positive mental health (self-esteem and satisfaction with family life) are protective factors against future depressive symptoms. In addition, depressive symptoms are risk factors for lower self-esteem and lower satisfaction with family life.

Is Religion Special?

Religion makes unique claims (e.g., the existence of supernatural agents) not found in other belief systems, but is religion itself psychologically special? Furthermore, religion is related to many domains of psychological interest, such as morality, health and well-being, self-control, meaning, and death anxiety. Does religion act on these domains via special mechanisms that are unlike secular mechanisms? These could include mechanisms such as beliefs in supernatural agents, providing ultimate meaning, and providing literal immortality. We apply a critical eye to these questions of specialness and conclude that although it is clear that religion is psychologically important, there is not yet strong evidence that it is psychologically special, with the possible exception of its effects on health. We highlight what would be required of future research aimed at convincingly demonstrating that religion is indeed psychologically special, including careful definitions of religion and careful attention to experimental design and causal inference.