Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Epiphenom

Home
About

Home
Nonreligious
The war on atheism – bucking the social norm leads to social rejection and unhappiness

The war on atheism – bucking the social norm leads to social rejection and unhappiness

Last updated on: November 12, 2014 at 3:20 am by Epiphenom

The war on atheism – bucking the social norm leads to social rejection and unhappiness 2014-11-12T03:20:48+01:00 Epiphenom

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Take any given country, and religious people tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives than the non-religious. Quite why this is so is a matter of debate, but there’s increasing evidence that part of the explanation is that happiness stems from believing yourself to be ‘normal’ – that you fit in with your community.

Olga Stavrova, at the University of Cologne in Germany, is an expert on how social norms affect individual happiness. For example, she’s recently shown that unmarried couples are less happy than married couples only in those countries where cohabitation is disapproved of (thus showing that there isn’t anything intrinsic to marriage that leads to happiness).

Now, along with colleagues, she’s taken a look at how attitudes to the non-religious affect their happiness and life satisfaction (these are two closely related measures – but happiness tends to reflect how you feel right now, whereas life satisfaction reflects longer-term feelings).

Using data from the World Values Survey, Stavrova assessed how desirable it was to be religious in each country. She based this on three factors: proportion of the population who were religious, the proportion that thought that non-religious politicians were unfit for public service, and the proportion that thought that children should be encouraged to learn a religious faith at home.

You can see the results in the first graphic. In countries where there is a strong religious social norm (solid line), there’s a strong relationship between and individual’s religious belief and their life satisfaction.

In countries with a weak religious social norm, the relationship is still there – but it’s much weaker (dashed line). (You’ll also see in this figure that countries with a weak religious social norm also tend to have higher life satisfaction for all people, religious or not – but that’s a different story!)

But is this because of active prejudice – or is there something else going on? To answer this, Stavrova turned to the European Social Survey.

The questions in this survey include several that address social inclusion, asking respondents whether they feel that others treat them with respect, whether they feel that they are treated fairly, and whether they feel they get recognition for the things that they do.

Overall, she found that religion was linked to social recognition, and that this did explain some of the happiness benefit to being religious (about 17% of the effect on happiness and 14% of the effect on life satisfaction was due to social recognition.

However, that varied a lot by country. In the graphic, you can see how religion relates to happiness in each country (ranging from the least religious countries on the left, to the most religious on the right), split out into three factors.

The top portion of the bar (light blue) shows the direct effect – in every country, religious people tend to be intrinsically happier, although this effect is larger in the more religious countries.

The bottom portion of the bar (dark blue) shows the indirect effect. Again, in almost every country, being religious leads to more social recognition, in turn leading to more happiness. This effect is much stronger in the more religious countries.

The one exception is the least religious country, East Germany. Here, being religious actually leads to social disapproval – it’s the one country where you could argue that there is a ‘war on religion’!

This research extends some earlier work which also found that religion only makes people happier if they are living in a country where religious people predominate. And there was another paper earlier this year which found that religious people have higher self esteem – but again only in countries that are highly religious.

These new data fit in nicely with those findings, and also suggest that the non-religious suffer ill effects from social exclusion in religious countries.

And the stress of that might explain why the brains of the non-religious seem to age and atrophy quicker!

Olga Stavrova, Detlef Fetchenhauer, & Thomas Schlösser (2012). Why are religious people happy? The effect of the social norm of religiosity across countries Social Science Research DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.07.002

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

August 29, 2012

Catholics and Muslims want democracy - but for different reasons

Next Post

September 7, 2012 Why is there something rather than nothing?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Causes of religion - evolution Causes of religion - psychological Causes of religion - social Demographics Digest Effects of religion - health Effects of religion - psychological Effects of religion - social Notifications Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many animals did Moses take on the Ark?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Two of each Seven of each One of each None