Religious and Spiritual Practices: Association with Dispositional Optimism in an Underprivileged Population in Lascano, Uruguay.

Abstract

Optimism seems to foster the ability to manage adverse situations better-a finding especially relevant for disadvantaged populations. Employing a unique sample from a small underprivileged village, we studied the association between religious/spiritual practices and dispositional optimism. The village belongs to a developing country that is, by far, the most secular country in Latin America;this makes itparticularly interesting forexploring the role of religious/spiritual practices in this context. We foundthat these practices werepositively associated with higher optimism, measured by the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R): those who practice spirituality, score, on average, 14.4 percentage points higher on the LOT-R than those who did not. This association seems to be especially robust in the case of the poor and less educated: those with religious/spiritual practices score 20 percentage points higher on the LOT-R. Thus, the role that these practices may play in dispositional optimism in disadvantaged populations deserves more attention.