Effect of Being Religious on Wellbeing in a Predominantly Atheist Country: Found a negative correlation between religiosity & physical & mental health

Kopecky, Robin, Silvia Boschetti, and Jaroslav Flegr. 2019. “Effect of Being Religious on Wellbeing in a Predominantly Atheist Country: Explorative Study on Wellbeing, Fitness, Physical and Mental Health.” PsyArXiv. April 29. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3kr6n

Abstract: Despite a large volume of research on the impact of religion on different aspects of life, there is still a lack of studies from post-communist countries.  In the current study, we aimed to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between religion and wellbeing, physical and mental health, education, sexual behavior and biological fitness among the Czech population. We managed to collect responses from 31633 participants and divided the sample into seven categories based on the type of religious belief and denomination (nonbelievers, believers without denomination, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hussites, Buddhists, Jews). We focused on the wellbeing as our main factor, which we define as composed of a number of sub-variables: physical and mental health, economic situation, self-attractiveness and the quality of the romantic relationship. In contrast to previous studies, we found a negative correlation between religiosity and physical and mental health. On the other hand, religiosity was connected to higher fitness, higher self-rated honesty and altruism, and lower sexual activity, which is in accord with the data from the western countries. Our findings suggest that even though Czechs had experienced years of oppression during the Communist regime, religion and religious beliefs still have considerable impact on their quality of life.

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fitness: current number of biological children, preferred total number of children, number of biological siblings, total number of biological aunts and uncles