Spirituality and religiousness as predictors of life satisfaction among Peruvian citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic

Renzo Felipe Carranza Esteban,Josue Edison Turpo-Chaparro,Oscar Mamani-Benito,Jesús Hanco Torres,Fiorella Sarria Arenaza

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06939

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine if religiousness and spirituality predict life satisfaction among Peruvian citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a non-experimental, predictive and cross-sectional study with a sample of 734 people of both sexes (39.5% males and 60.5% females) between 17-75 years of age (M = 32.05). To measure the variables, the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were used. A multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the variables that best predict life satisfaction, finding that the spirituality variable explains 10.7 % of the total variance of the life satisfaction variable. In summary, a positive and significant correlation between spirituality and life satisfaction is identified (r = .328, p < .01).

Highlights

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) a public health emergency on January 2020 and on March 11 2020, this organization declared it a pandemic (Ruiz-Manriquez et al, 2020).From that point on, the repercussions were evident in terms of physical health, and in aspects such as lifestyle, personal habits and people's religious beliefs, in large part due to the measures of social isolation and restrictions imposed in almost every country in the world (Ghosh et al, 2020). COVID-19 is obviously important from a biological point of view, psychological and social factors that influence people's behaviors have turned the situation into a world disaster, one of the worst health phenomena in recent years (Urzúa et al, 2020)
Differences between life satisfaction, spirituality and religiousness according to sex Student's t test for independent samples (Table 2) indicates that there are no significant differences between life satisfaction, spirituality and religiousness among males and females (p > 0.05)
Spirituality and religiousness have become an important resource for health improvement and population wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic (Koenig, 2020); different research studies point out that beliefs and religious practices help people to cope with stressful events, reduce anxiety and increase hope and life satisfaction (Park et al, 2012; Salmani et al, 2020)

Summary

Introduction

COVID-19 is obviously important from a biological point of view, psychological and social factors that influence people's behaviors have turned the situation into a world disaster, one of the worst health phenomena in recent years (Urzúa et al, 2020). In this context, some researchers such as Li et al (2020) have explored its impact on mental health among the general population, finding an increase in anxiety, depression and other feelings such as indignation, frustration and feelings of social risk as well as a decrease in positive emotions (happiness) and life satisfaction; the latter, considered one of the most important constructs for evaluating subjective well-being (Caycho-Rodríguez et al, 2018d). There is ample acceptance by the scientific community that religion should be classified as one of the determining factors of a person's health, even more so in the current context, where spiritual and religious beliefs in patients with COVID-19 have been shown to help foster mental relaxation and calm (Fardin, 2020)

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