The Positive Shift by Catherine A. Sanderson

Author:Catherine A. Sanderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946885715
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2018-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 8.2: People who frequently attend religious services are more likely to report feeling happy than those who rarely or never attend services.

Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (2018). The scientific pursuit of happiness. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 218–225. Copyright © 2018 by SAGE Publications. Reprinted by Permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

Moreover, religious involvement is associated with better health, including lower levels of cancer, heart disease, and stroke.25 People with stronger religious beliefs also have fewer complications and shorter hospital stays following heart surgery.26

In fact, these beliefs help people live longer. In one study, researchers examined data from more than seventy-four thousand women, who answered questionnaires about their diets, lifestyles, and health every two years, and about their religious-service attendance every four years.27 Compared with people who never attend religious services, those who attended more than once per week had 33 percent lower mortality risk during the sixteen-year study period and lived an average of five months longer, even when researchers took into account a variety of other factors, such as diet, physical activity, alcohol consumption, smoking status, body mass index, social integration, depression, race, and ethnicity. Those who attended weekly had a 26 percent lower risk and those who attended less than once a week had a 13 percent lower risk, and this behavior lowered their risk of both cardiovascular mortality (27 percent) and cancer mortality (21 percent). These lower rates of mortality mean that people who attend religious services more than weekly live to about age eighty-three, compared to only about age seventy-five for those who never attend religious services.

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