Are Religious People Happy or Non-Religious People Unhappy in Religious Contexts?

Abstract

In this study, we shed light on how the social aspect of religiosity affects well-being of religious and non-religious individuals utilizing a province-level representative dataset with more than 196,000 observations from Turkey. The large-scale data from an Islam-dominant country is one of the strengths of this article. First, in line with previous studies, we show that the average religiosity in the province where individuals live matters especially for the well-being of religious individuals. Second, the bulk of non-religious people do not care about others’ religiosity nor what others think of their own religiosity. Moreover, 94% of the non-religious do not feel under pressure. When put together, the analysis results suggest that what drives person–culture fit in religiosity in Turkey is not non-religious people’s marginalization. Rather, religious people seem to benefit from being in the company of fellow religious individuals as they attach an importance to others’ religiosity.