Do faith and religious practice have something to do with the happiness of Europeans, or not?
Two scholars at the University of Navarra, Alejo José G. Sison and Juncal Cuñado, sought the answer to this question, using three different data sets from the European Social Survey, which surveyed 114,019 people in 24 different countries in the years 2002/2003, 2004, and 2006.
This data included information on personal characteristics such as gender, age, income, general health, marital status, employment, number of children, and level of education for each person surveyed.
Two groups of variables were chosen as religious indicators. The first group, “religious faith,” deals with questions such as: “Do you belong to a particular religion?” (yes or no); “What religion or religious denomination do you belong to?” (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, other Christian denomination, Jewish, Muslim, Eastern religions, and other non-Christian religions); and “How religious are you? (on a scale from 0 to 9 - “not religious at all” to “very religious.”).
A second group of questions centered around religious practice and consisted of the following questions: “How often do you attend religious services, not including special occasions?” Responses could range from “every day” to “many times per week,” “once a week,” “at least once a week,” “only on special holidays,” to “very little” or “never.”
As is the case with most studies on economics and happiness, researchers used the question: “How happy are you?” The subject could respond on a scale from 1 for “not happy” to 10 for “completely happy.”
On average, happiness in 24 European countries has an average value of 7.26, but with great variances - from 5.54 in Ukraine to 8.32 in Denmark. Scholars have found different meanings in religious variables. The countries with the lowest proportion of individuals belonging to a particular religion are Estonia and the Czech Republic, while those with the highest number are Greece, Portugal, Poland, and Ireland. And there is also evidence of differences between “religious faith” and “religious practice.”
For example, the proportion of people in Spain who belong to a religion is 74%, 12 points above the standard average, even though the number of individuals who participate in services and prayer is actually below the European average.
But given this, when scholars looked for a correlation between religion and happiness in Europe, they found some very interesting results. First of all, belonging to a religion has a significant effect on happiness. Those who belong to a religion indicate levels of happiness greater than those who say they are non-religious.
Furthermore, the choice of religion or religious denomination has an important effect on happiness. Protestants, Catholics, and other Christian denominations indicate higher levels of happiness, while Orthodox and Eastern religions show the lowest.
It seems that there is a positive relationship between a person’s religiosity and their happiness. The more religious a person is, the happier they feel. However, those who consider themselves “not religious at all” (0) have levels of happiness comparable to those who give themselves a 5 on the scale of religiosity.
The frequency of participation in religious services also positively correlates to happiness. Those who attend religious services every day say they are happier in comparison to those who never attend. And similarly, the frequency of prayer has a positive correlation to happiness. Those who pray every day indicate higher levels of happiness than those who never pray. The variable of frequency of participation in services is more important than the frequency of prayer in self-reported levels of happiness.
From a psychological perspective, the scientific literature provides three possible explanations for the positive connection between religion and happiness. The first relates to social support. People are happier when they are in a supportive environment, and religion provides this. This explains why the beneficial influence of religion on happiness is stronger among people who need support, such as the elderly, the sick, and single people.
Furthermore, religions allow people to feel close to God, who is seen as a source of support.
Furthermore, people with strong beliefs, who have a sense of what is important and a distinct orientation in life, tend to be happier. Religion offers such to people. This aspect of religion may have something to do with the most successful members of conservative churches. Even if those churches are morally and practically more demanding, they offer greater certainty of belief.
Finally, religion in itself can contribute to happiness, bringing about positive experiences like the sensation of being in contact with God - or at least the transcendent - or with others.
The psychological explanations, however, still leave many questions open, if viewed in relation to the investigation on happiness; both in regard to the support given by religions, and the relationship between happiness and attending services.