Study shows Religious people are "More Happy" - Page 1

A strong correlation exists between religiosity and personal happiness, according to a new study by the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture.

The study found that people who attend religious services on a weekly basis are nearly twice as likely to describe themselves as “very happy” (45%) than people who never attend (28%). Conversely, those who never worship are twice as likely to say they are “very unhappy” (4%) as those who attend services weekly (2%).

Building on prior research, this broad survey of American adults comprised a representative sample of 15,738 Americans between the ages of 18 and 60.

The study indicated that not only religious service attendance, but self-reported “religiosity” and religious “affiliation” are also linked with happiness levels. Yet of the three indicators, service attendance has the highest correlation to increased happiness. The study showed that higher levels of church attendance “predict higher life satisfaction,” even after accounting for how important religious faith is in people’s lives.

The correlation between religiosity and happiness is clear, but explanations of the connection and possible causal relationship are less clear. One theory suggests that the social support that religious communities can provide may be a key factor contributing to increased happiness, since “religious Americans are more apt to be involved in their communities.” Yet even here, the study found “that those who attend religious services often are happier than their peers with similar levels of involvement in the community.”

These statistics tying happiness to religiosity have held true over time. A similar survey conducted ten years ago generated similar results, leading to the same conclusions. When the General Social Survey asked a sample of Americans in 2004, “Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” religious people were more than twice as likely as the non-religious to say they were “very happy” (43%-21%). The secular people, or those who never attend worship services, were overwhelmingly more likely to say they were not too happy (21%-8%).

One could almost predict that many of those celebrating Christmas will be merry, those observing Hanukkah will be happy, but those only recognizing the “holidays” will have a little less cause for rejoicing.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/12/24/religious-people-much-happier-than-others-new-study-shows/

ML kills that data.

The religious people that I know , are probably happy because they drink like a fish!

Then there is this. IDK, lol.

 

Studies comparing religious belief and IQ

In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity was found in 53, and a positive relation in the remaining ten. Controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants.^[1][2]

 

  The relationship between countries' belief in a god and average Intelligence Quotient, measured by Lynn, Harvey & Nyborg.^[11]

Nyborg also co-authored a study with Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, which compared religious belief and average national IQs in 137 countries.^[11] The study analysed the issue from several viewpoints. Firstly, using data from a U.S. study of 6,825 adolescents, the authors found that atheists scored 6 IQ points higher than non-atheists.

Secondly, the authors investigated the link between religiosity and intelligence on a country level. Among the sample of 137 countries, only 23 (17%) had more than 20% of atheists, which constituted “virtually all... higher IQ countries.” The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which was determined to be “highly statistically significant”.^[11]

Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society from London's Birkbeck College, expressed concern that the study failed to take into account a complex range of social, economic and historical factors, each of which has been shown to interact with religion and IQ in different ways.^[12] Gallup surveys, for example, have found that the world's poorest countries are consistently the most religious, perhaps because religion plays a more functional role (helping people cope) in poorer nations.^[5][6]

Commenting on some of the above studies in The Daily Telegraph, Lynn said "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."^[12] A study published in Social Psychology Quarterly in March 2010^[13] also stated that "atheism ...correlate[s] with higher intelligence".^[14]

...belief in God may be intuitive for reasons related to more general features of human cognition that give rise to tendencies toward dualism (Bering, 2006, 2011), anthropomorphism (Epley,Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007; Waytz et al., 2010), and promiscuous teleology (Kelemen & Rosset, 2009)... What’s more, the belief in God may give rise to a feedback cycle whereby satisfying explanatory appeals to God reinforce the intuitive cognitive style that originally favored the belief in God.

“
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- Amitai Shenhav, David G. Rand, and Joshua D. Greene^[15]

Even at the scale of the individual, IQ may not directly cause more disbelief in God. Dr David Hardman of London Metropolitan University says: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief." He adds that other studies do nevertheless correlate IQ with being willing or able to question beliefs.^[12]

Researcher Gregory S. Paul's findings suggest that economic development has a closer relationship with religiosity.^[16] He argues that once any "nation's population becomes prosperous and secure, for example through economic security and universal health care, much of the population loses interest in seeking the aid and protection of supernatural entities." Other studies have shown that increased wealth is correlated with a decline in religious beliefs.^[17][18] Indeed, the majority of the nations that showed a strong relationship between low religiosity and high I

So, I guess ignorance really is bliss.

 mentioned it before but i find it telling, there is an old study proving northern blacks are smarter than southern whites on average. the study had something to with arguments for slavery, southerners claiming blacks are so dumb they needed to be slaves for their own protection.