20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
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Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#2Interesting. I wonder how you square that with results from "are you happy?" surveys comparing the religious and irreligious.
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#3“ Meta-analyses have pointed to a positive relationship between religiosity and a person’s evaluation of their life, suggesting that people who are more religious tend to feel better about their lives. But researcher Mohsen Joshanloo remarks that these studies have not offered strong evidence of a causal relationship between the two variables. “
E.g. maybe happy people are more likely to be religious, but like with most social science, there is no way to test this with the scientific method because of ethical reasons.
My favorite stat is that weekly church goers report the highest satisfaction in their sex lives.
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#4Interesting. I wonder how you square that with results from "are you happy?" surveys comparing the religious and irreligious.
Survivorship bias. Especially for high-demand religions, answering "no" means admitting the church you make so many sacrifices for does absolutely nothing. This leaves those who are either too afraid to confront the cognitive dissonance or who were already happy in the first place.
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#5“ Meta-analyses have pointed to a positive relationship between religiosity and a person’s evaluation of their life, suggesting that people who are more religious tend to feel better about their lives. But researcher Mohsen Joshanloo remarks that these studies have not offered strong evidence of a causal relationship between the two variables. “ E.g. maybe happy people are more likely to be religious, but like with m…
> My favorite stat is that weekly church goers report the highest satisfaction in their sex lives.
That's really interesting. Is there more data? Any differences between the sexes? Age?
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#6The point of religion is to solve civilization-scale game theory coordination dilemmas. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a mutually beneficial metastable equilibrium but is only stable to the extent that it is a universally adopted principle. A lot of modern tragedies like climate change can be tackled in this way if we can establish universal shared values that apply to all people independent of nationality, status and in particular, education. It needs to be comprehensible to all 7 billion people for them to adopt it, including areas of the world with low literacy.
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#7Interesting. I wonder how you square that with results from "are you happy?" surveys comparing the religious and irreligious.
Survivorship bias. Especially for high-demand religions, answering "no" means admitting the church you make so many sacrifices for does absolutely nothing. This leaves those who are either too afraid to confront the cognitive dissonance or who were already happy in the first place.
Where do you get the premise of religion being a happier life?
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#8Not sure I like the easy assumption here that "panel study" = causality. Suppose I get happier. Then I go to church more. The use of some complicated-ass Granger-causality-style technique also makes me trust it less.
This natural experiment looks more interesting, although it exploits just a temporary shock (variation in the length of Ramdan):
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/130/2/615/2330341?login...
"We study the economic effects of religious practices in the context of the observance of Ramadan fasting, one of the central tenets of Islam. To establish causality, we exploit variation in the length of daily fasting due to the interaction between the rotating Islamic calendar and a country’s latitude. We report two key, quantitatively meaningful results: (i) longer Ramadan fasting has a negative effect on output growth in Muslim countries, and (ii) it increases subjective well-being among Muslims. We find evidence that these patterns are consistent with a standard club good explanation for the emergence of costly religious practices: increased strictness of fasting screens out the less committed members, while the more committed respond with an increase in their relative levels of participation."
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#9Interesting. I wonder how you square that with results from "are you happy?" surveys comparing the religious and irreligious.
Reverse causality or unobserved confounds. Maybe happy people are more likely to become or stay religious. Maybe living in an area with strong community makes you happier and you also get dragged along to church (but the two do not influence each other).
Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction
#10The point of religion is to solve civilization-scale game theory coordination dilemmas. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a mutually beneficial metastable equilibrium but is only stable to the extent that it is a universally adopted principle. A lot of modern tragedies like climate change can be tackled in this way if we can establish universal shared values that apply to all people independent of nationality, status and in p…
>"The point of religion is..."
Citation please