Abstract
Spirituality and religiosity have been found to be positive predictors of subjective well-being, even if results are not altogether consistent across studies. This mixed evidence is probably due to the inadequate operationalization of the constructs as well as the neglect of the moderation effect that the individuals’ religious status can have on the relation between spirituality/religiosity and subjective well-being. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship of spirituality and religiosity with subjective well-being (operationalized as both life satisfaction and balance between positive and negative affect) and to test whether differences exist according to individuals’ religious status (religious, non-religious, and uncertain). Data were collected from 267 Italian adults aged 18–77 (M = 36.68; SD = 15.13), mainly women (59.9%). In order to test the role of spirituality (operationalized as Purpose, Innerness, Interconnection, and Transcendence) and religiosity (operationalized as three dimensions of the religious identity: Commitment, In-depth Exploration, and Reconsideration of Commitment) in subjective well-being, two path analysis models were run, one for each predictor. To test the invariance of the two models across the individuals’ religious status, two multi-group models were run. The models concerning spirituality were tested on the entire sample, finding that spirituality had a positive impact on subjective well-being (except for the dimension of Interconnection) and that this relation is unaffected by the individual’s religious status. The models concerning religiosity were instead tested only on religious and uncertain, finding that the relationship between religiosity and subjective well-being changes across religious status. In particular, the main difference we found was that religious identity commitment positively predicted satisfaction with life among religious, but not among uncertain individuals. An interpretation of the results and their implications are discussed.
Highlights
Subjective well-being (SWB) concerns people’s evaluations of the quality of their own lives (Diener, 1984; Stratham and Chase, 2010)
The cognitive dimension of SWB – that is life satisfaction – has been measured through both the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al, 1985), which refers to a global evaluation of life satisfaction (e.g., Mak et al, 2011), and the Personal Well-being Index (PWI; Cummins and Lau, 2004), which requires a domain evaluation of life satisfaction (Lai et al, 2013)
This study aimed to investigate the role of spirituality and religiosity on SWB and to test whether differences exist according to individuals’ religious status
Summary
Subjective well-being (SWB) concerns people’s evaluations of the quality of their own lives (Diener, 1984; Stratham and Chase, 2010). This appraisal comprises a cognitive and an affective component (Diener, 1984; Luhmann, 2017; Diener et al, 2018), which refer, respectively, to cognitive judgments about achieving important values and goals in the life span of the individual and to the balance between positive and negative affect (Luhmann et al, 2012a,b). A growing body of research investigates the role that spirituality and religiosity play in individuals’ self-perceived well-being, identifying a positive effect of religion and spirituality on many psychosocial and health-related outcomes across the lifespan (e.g., Fabricatore et al, 2000; Fry, 2000; Mueller et al, 2001; George et al, 2002; Levin and Chatters, 2008; Krause, 2011; VanderWeele, 2017)
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