Religious people tend to report more life satisfaction, and a new study explains
why. It is not their spirituality, belief in heaven, or even the ritual act of praying or going to a
house of worship that leads to pious to happiness. Rather, the study found, it is the close
friends people gain through their religions that makes a difference.
The finding suggests that forging close bonds with people over mutually shared
and meaningful interests might boost quality of life for anyone, religious or not. But there is
something about being part of a congregation in particular that seems to build a sense of
community and lead to fulfillment for many people. "My co-author and I have found that
religious people tend to volunteer more, care more about their community and do more
good in their neighborhoods
said Chaeyoon Lim, a sociologist at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. "All of that can be explained by friendships in the congregation that
seem to make people not only happier, but also nicer people and better citizens.
Plenty of studies have established a link between religious and wellbeing, but the
relationship poses a chicken-and-egg kind of problem. Does going to church really make
people happier? Or do happier people tend to go to church? To decipher some of the
details, Lim and colleague Robert Putnam of Harvard University used data from a survey
that interviewed a representative sample of more than 3,000 Americans in 2006 and many
of the same group again in 2007. The survey asked participants tons of questions about
themselves, including dozens about the role that religion plays in their daily lives.
Results showed that frequency of attendance to religious service mattered more
than anything besides health in determining how satified people were with their lives, the
researchers rep
today in the journal American Sociological Review. The more often
people went to services, the happier they reported being up to about weekly, at which
point wellbeing ratings reached a plateau. Twenty-eight percent of people who go to service
weekly will say they are extremely satisfied with their uives, the study predicted, compared
with less than 20 percent of people who never go to a place of worship. That's the same
difference as between people who they are in "very good" health compared to those in
say "good" health, and between people with a family income $100,000
compared to those with an income of $10,000.