And yet surveys such as Pew, Gallup, and GSS indicate that the moderately religious or agnostic identities have lower happiness than both the religious and atheists. The relationship of happiness and belief in god/ certainty is curvilinear.
What about controlling for income? One thing I have learned from your sub stack is that as people get more education, they are more likely to be religious. So could this data be influenced by the fact that these more religious people are also more educated and more wealthy?
It seems like marriage is doing part of the work here, especially in the millennial group. Marriage and religiousity are endogenous, so religious participation causing happiness in part by way of promoting marriages doesn't undermine the main point.
If I were filling out that survey, I think I'd feel pressure to say that I'm happy. Like someone might see my responses (or God, at least, sees them). It's also easier to answer Happy than to deal with the dissonance created by answering Unhappy. Or maybe I'm supposed to believe that I'm happy, because anything else seems like a slap in God's face. As a Christian who struggles off and on with depression, I've given this some thought. I guess I'd be interested to see a comparison of people who have strong community connections vs those who don't, so see if it has more to do with that.
We once had a guest lecturer in my Intro to Economics class at UVA. He was using survey and economic data to show that countries with a higher GDP report higher levels of happiness (scatterplot). I asked him how Japan could possibly be ranked so high in happiness when I knew for a fact, having grown up there as a missionary kid, that the suicide and depression rates were abnormally high among 1st world countries. Your comment made me think of this.
I think this is a really good question, since the metric being considered here is attendance, not religious identification or some private marker of religiosity like belief or prayer practice. Based on other data I've encountered, I would guess that community belonging and a sense of connection with God through things like prayer and meditation are the primary things that increase happiness. Whereas other factors, like belief in specific doctrines, reading religious texts, or following moral instructions would have a weaker correlation with happiness. But I doubt there's census data that can get this granular.
Lots of very funny coping and seething in the comments here from secularists resisting the obvious conclusions. Turns out human beings are made to be in communion with one another, who knew? (Many knew.)
Data like this is part of why I went from “none” to “Catholic.”
An example of something I've seen often: a result that holds in US cross-section doesn't carry over to international comparisons. US is much more religious than other advanced countries but not particularly happy, especially after controlling for income.
Interesting that there’s a relationship between self-reported happiness and self-reported religious activity attendance.
Does religious attendance cause happiness or does happiness lead to attending religious activities?
Both measures are pretty nebulous. Consider, too, the growing body of writings from those who’ve broken from evangelical traditions reporting that their happiness there was an illusion. They were told that they had to be happy else their faith was lacking.
I don’t know.
I would hesitate to tell someone who’s unhappy just go to church, any church, weekly & everything’ll be coming up roses.
I’d be interested in examining why people attend, what factors contribute to retention & what role, if any, does happiness fill?
There might even be another factor linking attendance & happiness.
Additionally, women and men attending weekly religious services are 68% and 33% less likely respectively to die “deaths of despair” — suicide, drug overdose or alcohol poisoning — according to 2020 research from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) research found states with decreased religious participation correlated with increased deaths of despair. A “Psychiatric Times” academic literature review reported, “Of 93 observational studies, two-thirds found lower rates of depressive disorder with fewer depressive symptoms in persons who were more religious.”
Boston University researcher Brian J. Grim found “more than 84% of scientific studies show that faith is a positive factor in addiction prevention or recovery and a risk in less than 2% of the studies reviewed.”
My post was about the broadness of the factors religious activity attendance & self-reported happiness.
I view your citing secularism with respect to suicide, depression, mental illness, & drug addiction interesting.
Are you asserting that secularism causes those four horsemen of despair?
Do you have a reference for these findings? It would be helpful to know how secularism was defined inasmuch as faith as a factor raises the question as to what faith, what denominational nuances are represented under the broad umbrella?
I checked out the WaPo story you cited & it was more about those choosing specific careers as opposed to support groups.
As a scientist, I find many studies avoid the narrow gate of specific factors in favor of the broader gate that supplies relationships without identifying the characteristics most responsible.
This leaves me wondering what are the characteristics of that which you call faith are at play?
What do you think are likely candidates for the correlations?
The WashPost story is not just about occupations. It also discusses everyday activities engaged in personal time as well. That article is based on data from AmeriCorps, which found “Religious and spiritual activities” bring people the most happiness and meaning and lowest stress of any other activity, including above “Sports, exercise and recreation” or “Socializing, relaxing and leisure.”
I have thought of religion and spirituality in 4 quadrants with religion and spirituality on their separate X and Y axis. Jesus was religious and spiritual--where we seek to land--where greatest human fullness and joy are. Oprah and New Age types are spiritual but not religious and the murderous Chinese Communist Party and former Soviet Union neither religious nor spiritual and create death and darkness. Some people are "religious but not spiritual," and I would put the Pharisees who killed Jesus in that category, or like a pedophile priest, or adulterous/embezzling pastor, etc. I would also put my father in this category as he was highly abusive of me and my 7 siblings and claimed to be a Mormon prophet while doing so. Thus: "We found that religious non-believers reported higher levels of psychopathic traits, namely Self-Centered Impulsivity and Coldheartedness, than do religious believers." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4106400/
A significant confusion arises when people confuse God with religion. God is infinite, perfect, eternal. God is a healing force, and a force that generates peace, happiness, joy, etc. (in the Christian tradition, the fruits of God's holy spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, self-control) Religion is the creaky, human-run institution that at its best can point us, guide us and direct us to God (in some Protestant traditions, the "church" is the people, who are inherently flawed and will never be perfect). But at its worst, religion murders God. That said, when looking at the vast preponderance of evidence, Judeo-Christian religion overall is overwhelmingly a positive force for good in the world, including for positive mental health.
I gave you the institutional citations of the strong correlations between faith and mental health, but here are the links if you can't find them.
Boston University researcher Brian J. Grim reported “more than 84% of scientific studies show that faith is a positive factor in addiction prevention or recovery and a risk in less than 2% of the studies reviewed.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6759672/
Thank you for the clarification. I was addressing the article generally not necessarily the last two tables on happiness, meaning & stress with respect to activities and locations. Indeed religious/spiritual activities & places of worship are #1 yet that's more a ranking than clear distinction. I would argue that sports/exercise/recreation & outdoors aren't far behind. Interestingly enough, someone else's home is 3rd on the location list & caring for/helping non-household members 3rd on activities.
I would still argue that religious/spiritual activities/place of worship aren't very informative given the extreme variety of activities & places.
I would include myself in the category of weekly religious attendance, engaging in religious discussions, helping my neighbors through church sponsored activities, etc. I also have observed much variability among my peers such that I wouldn't equate our religious/spiritual activities. I've also visited various places of worship, rustic chapels, small churches, megachurches, cathedrals, basilicas, etc. Some are serene, some are noisy with chaos, some the setting for sermons preaching less than love for others.
That's my critique on using aggregate variables like these and providing broad conclusions that aren't what I'd consider firmly grounded.
As one trained in statistics & psychometry, meanings of factors are critical to interpretation and must be taken seriously.
If you'd like, I can continue our discussion by reviewing articles you cite and provide my reaction.
You mention briefly that maybe happier people go to church rather than church making them happy. To the extent that that's true, maybe church is more welcoming to happy people than to unhappy people.
The fact that the church is shrinking, even though it's a place for happy people, makes me think that perhaps (in terms of revealed preferences, at least), people don't value happiness as highly as they used to. (Or at least that's one factor in church decline.) I think of the atheists who are very sensitive to suffering and thus find the Problem of Evil very salient. They might dislike a happy church, exactly because it's happy. Or some of the serious Christians who don't go to church (that Julia Duin talks about in her book Quitting Church) may find church to be too much about being filled and not enough about "hungering and thirsting for righteousness". Maybe a researcher could test for some of this?
Jesus asked the question, "Do you want to be healed?" to a paralytic man at the Pool of Bethesda. Sadly, the answer for many of us in a broken state, is "no." Because we don't know how to and b/c we experienced "church hurt" or religious abuse.
I know your area of research and expertise is grounded in Christianity but, do the happiness findings extend to other religions say; Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism?
Makes me wonder if it has always been true? The data has shown this for several decades now, but was it true 125 years ago when religion was much more about eternal damnation and fear of the Lord? Or has this happened since religion became therapy for individualism? (Put another way, I once saw a great presentation about Noah's Ark where the scene was the dead bodies of all those who did not believe. Now it's a happy boat trip with animals.)
I've got to admit -- I think about this way too much. I'm listening to Chernow's new Twain biography. It's 44 hours long. That dude complained about everything. But he also had the right to, in my opinion. Lost his first son in infancy. His father in law (who he enjoyed) died soon after he married his wife. He was sick all the time. His wife was sick, too.
One of my opinions I think is a) really true and b) like Jaynes' Bicameral Mind theory, utterly impossible to prove one way or another is that people even a hundred years ago (but especially pre-Modern Era man) were so different than us and that that our definitions of "happiness" are so WEIRD/Post Modern/Individualistic/Agentic that mapping the concept onto them is a bad fit. We would be profoundly unhappy living their lives and they would probably be profoundly unhappy living ours (I think there are exceptions to this general rule), and it's probably futile to judge.
I take your point. And I loved Jayne's book back in college (one million years ago). But it's a big claim that even "happiness" is simply not comparable over a period as short as 125 years. I grant you post-modern, individual, agentic--all of it. But I'm not convinced people are that much different than they were just a century ago.
Thanks. I guess it depends on what one means by "religious." Estimates I've seen are that religious participation in the US was around 35% in 1900, so fairly close to today. It got much higher in the mid-20th century. But I would agree with you that more people probably believed in the supernatural and in "fate" in 1900.
the 9% don't have children yet. Once you have children, you are happier when with other parents and/or getting help from churches in raising those children.
I was an adult evangelical for 27 years. I even went to Bible college and was involved in several church plants. I became an atheist when I was 45. I have thoughts....
I don't think that there is a god who is imparting divine happiness to anyone. I think that a lot of religious happiness revolves around community. As you say, "The most religiously active are the happiest." That is, they are the most engaged in their community, and they are connected with a group of like minds. There is tremendous human comfort to be found in community. And when we surround ourselves with people who we identify with, we lower our defenses and are at ease.
I think that most atheists tend to be solo fliers. Atheism is a minority belief in this country, so we are often seen as pariahs. Because our identifying belief is a negative, it's not obvious to most that we should gather in community and encourage one another in our non-belief.
But there are atheists and agnostics who gather together in meetups, and some who even go to church (Unitarian Universalists welcome all, even non-believers). I am a leader in an atheist non-profit group that encourages fellowship and community.
In this technological age, it's very easy for people to get disconnected and isolated. I would love to see similar studies about happiness that consider whether or not non-believers are in community. And I believe you would find that the non-believers who are active in community are just as happy as the religious folks who are active in their communities. I also suspect that you would find that folks who are isolated (both religious and non-religious) tend to be the unhappiest.
I lead a ministry organization that works with churches around outreach to families impacted by mental illness. When I look at Ryan's data, along with other recent work by the Institute for Family Studies and other research around mental illness and church attendance, multiple hypotheses come to mind:
Church attendance produces tangible mental health benefits, reported by Harold Koenig and other investigators.
Church attendance is a marker of social integration, and other avenues of social integration beyond church produce additional mental health benefits.
The presence of mental illness at an early age makes church attendance far less likely, and church attendance is far less likely for adults with significant mental health symptoms, according to Andrew Whitehead (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jssr.12521) and the Baylor Study of Religion (2011). As a result, young adults with mental illness are far less likely to have had a meaningful experience of church, and the data reflects that reality.
Political orientation represents an alternative belief system associated with catastrophic thinking, worse mental health outcomes, and for most progressives, is associated with a propensity to avoid churches where one's worldview is likely to be challenged.
Questions for Ryan regarding your last graph showing high rates of happiness among young progressives who regularly attend church. That group is very small. Anything else interesting about them demographically? So small that they're a statistical blip in the studies that show huge gaps in mental illness between young progressive and conservative women?
Did you look into the varying definitions of "happiness" among the surveyed individuals? It seems to me that it's possible that people who focus on the aftermaths of their lives might be somewhat less concerned about today's events compared to people who focus on the here and now.
Here is another true thing: you do excellent work here as usual!
Looking forward to these happiness indicators controlled by your 4 types of Nones!
I do have a piece about well-being among the four types of Nones in the hopper. And let me tell you...it's gonna ruffle a lot of feathers.
I'll definitely look forward to that Ryan!
And yet surveys such as Pew, Gallup, and GSS indicate that the moderately religious or agnostic identities have lower happiness than both the religious and atheists. The relationship of happiness and belief in god/ certainty is curvilinear.
What about controlling for income? One thing I have learned from your sub stack is that as people get more education, they are more likely to be religious. So could this data be influenced by the fact that these more religious people are also more educated and more wealthy?
(Really enjoy reading this newsletter!!)
https://ibb.co/27QKrGT8
Wow! Big differences at all income levels. Thanks.
Other things I would be interested in controlling for: kids, marriage status, length of current residence (as a proxy for stability).
Here's marital status:
https://ibb.co/Pvx0bdJh
It seems like marriage is doing part of the work here, especially in the millennial group. Marriage and religiousity are endogenous, so religious participation causing happiness in part by way of promoting marriages doesn't undermine the main point.
If I were filling out that survey, I think I'd feel pressure to say that I'm happy. Like someone might see my responses (or God, at least, sees them). It's also easier to answer Happy than to deal with the dissonance created by answering Unhappy. Or maybe I'm supposed to believe that I'm happy, because anything else seems like a slap in God's face. As a Christian who struggles off and on with depression, I've given this some thought. I guess I'd be interested to see a comparison of people who have strong community connections vs those who don't, so see if it has more to do with that.
We once had a guest lecturer in my Intro to Economics class at UVA. He was using survey and economic data to show that countries with a higher GDP report higher levels of happiness (scatterplot). I asked him how Japan could possibly be ranked so high in happiness when I knew for a fact, having grown up there as a missionary kid, that the suicide and depression rates were abnormally high among 1st world countries. Your comment made me think of this.
I think this is a really good question, since the metric being considered here is attendance, not religious identification or some private marker of religiosity like belief or prayer practice. Based on other data I've encountered, I would guess that community belonging and a sense of connection with God through things like prayer and meditation are the primary things that increase happiness. Whereas other factors, like belief in specific doctrines, reading religious texts, or following moral instructions would have a weaker correlation with happiness. But I doubt there's census data that can get this granular.
Lots of very funny coping and seething in the comments here from secularists resisting the obvious conclusions. Turns out human beings are made to be in communion with one another, who knew? (Many knew.)
Data like this is part of why I went from “none” to “Catholic.”
Yes, and why the Mormon church and Sikh communities are so happy, I think.
An example of something I've seen often: a result that holds in US cross-section doesn't carry over to international comparisons. US is much more religious than other advanced countries but not particularly happy, especially after controlling for income.
Interesting that there’s a relationship between self-reported happiness and self-reported religious activity attendance.
Does religious attendance cause happiness or does happiness lead to attending religious activities?
Both measures are pretty nebulous. Consider, too, the growing body of writings from those who’ve broken from evangelical traditions reporting that their happiness there was an illusion. They were told that they had to be happy else their faith was lacking.
I don’t know.
I would hesitate to tell someone who’s unhappy just go to church, any church, weekly & everything’ll be coming up roses.
I’d be interested in examining why people attend, what factors contribute to retention & what role, if any, does happiness fill?
There might even be another factor linking attendance & happiness.
Suicide, depression, mental illness, addiction are correlated with secularism. No doubt there is a positive effect from the community impacts of attending church, but it's more than that b/c community groups like bowling or sports don't offer the same level of purpose/meaning that religion does, according to https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/22/most-fulfilling-jobs-america-may-not-be-ones-you-expect/
Additionally, women and men attending weekly religious services are 68% and 33% less likely respectively to die “deaths of despair” — suicide, drug overdose or alcohol poisoning — according to 2020 research from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) research found states with decreased religious participation correlated with increased deaths of despair. A “Psychiatric Times” academic literature review reported, “Of 93 observational studies, two-thirds found lower rates of depressive disorder with fewer depressive symptoms in persons who were more religious.”
Boston University researcher Brian J. Grim found “more than 84% of scientific studies show that faith is a positive factor in addiction prevention or recovery and a risk in less than 2% of the studies reviewed.”
Thank you for your reply.
My post was about the broadness of the factors religious activity attendance & self-reported happiness.
I view your citing secularism with respect to suicide, depression, mental illness, & drug addiction interesting.
Are you asserting that secularism causes those four horsemen of despair?
Do you have a reference for these findings? It would be helpful to know how secularism was defined inasmuch as faith as a factor raises the question as to what faith, what denominational nuances are represented under the broad umbrella?
I checked out the WaPo story you cited & it was more about those choosing specific careers as opposed to support groups.
As a scientist, I find many studies avoid the narrow gate of specific factors in favor of the broader gate that supplies relationships without identifying the characteristics most responsible.
This leaves me wondering what are the characteristics of that which you call faith are at play?
What do you think are likely candidates for the correlations?
The WashPost story is not just about occupations. It also discusses everyday activities engaged in personal time as well. That article is based on data from AmeriCorps, which found “Religious and spiritual activities” bring people the most happiness and meaning and lowest stress of any other activity, including above “Sports, exercise and recreation” or “Socializing, relaxing and leisure.”
I have thought of religion and spirituality in 4 quadrants with religion and spirituality on their separate X and Y axis. Jesus was religious and spiritual--where we seek to land--where greatest human fullness and joy are. Oprah and New Age types are spiritual but not religious and the murderous Chinese Communist Party and former Soviet Union neither religious nor spiritual and create death and darkness. Some people are "religious but not spiritual," and I would put the Pharisees who killed Jesus in that category, or like a pedophile priest, or adulterous/embezzling pastor, etc. I would also put my father in this category as he was highly abusive of me and my 7 siblings and claimed to be a Mormon prophet while doing so. Thus: "We found that religious non-believers reported higher levels of psychopathic traits, namely Self-Centered Impulsivity and Coldheartedness, than do religious believers." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4106400/
A significant confusion arises when people confuse God with religion. God is infinite, perfect, eternal. God is a healing force, and a force that generates peace, happiness, joy, etc. (in the Christian tradition, the fruits of God's holy spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, self-control) Religion is the creaky, human-run institution that at its best can point us, guide us and direct us to God (in some Protestant traditions, the "church" is the people, who are inherently flawed and will never be perfect). But at its worst, religion murders God. That said, when looking at the vast preponderance of evidence, Judeo-Christian religion overall is overwhelmingly a positive force for good in the world, including for positive mental health.
I gave you the institutional citations of the strong correlations between faith and mental health, but here are the links if you can't find them.
Women and men attending weekly religious services are 68% and 33% less likely, respectively, to die “deaths of despair” — suicide, drug overdose or alcohol poisoning — according to 2020 research from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/regularly-attending-religious-services-associated-with-lower-risk-of-deaths-of-despair/
The National Bureau of Economic Research found states with decreased religious participation saw increased deaths of despair. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30840/w30840.pdf
A “Psychiatric Times” academic literature review reported of 93 observational studies, “two-thirds found lower rates of depressive disorder with fewer depressive symptoms in persons who were more religious.” https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/religion-spirituality-and-mental-health
Boston University researcher Brian J. Grim reported “more than 84% of scientific studies show that faith is a positive factor in addiction prevention or recovery and a risk in less than 2% of the studies reviewed.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6759672/
Thank you for the clarification. I was addressing the article generally not necessarily the last two tables on happiness, meaning & stress with respect to activities and locations. Indeed religious/spiritual activities & places of worship are #1 yet that's more a ranking than clear distinction. I would argue that sports/exercise/recreation & outdoors aren't far behind. Interestingly enough, someone else's home is 3rd on the location list & caring for/helping non-household members 3rd on activities.
I would still argue that religious/spiritual activities/place of worship aren't very informative given the extreme variety of activities & places.
I would include myself in the category of weekly religious attendance, engaging in religious discussions, helping my neighbors through church sponsored activities, etc. I also have observed much variability among my peers such that I wouldn't equate our religious/spiritual activities. I've also visited various places of worship, rustic chapels, small churches, megachurches, cathedrals, basilicas, etc. Some are serene, some are noisy with chaos, some the setting for sermons preaching less than love for others.
That's my critique on using aggregate variables like these and providing broad conclusions that aren't what I'd consider firmly grounded.
As one trained in statistics & psychometry, meanings of factors are critical to interpretation and must be taken seriously.
If you'd like, I can continue our discussion by reviewing articles you cite and provide my reaction.
Would you like to engage in such a dialogue?
You mention briefly that maybe happier people go to church rather than church making them happy. To the extent that that's true, maybe church is more welcoming to happy people than to unhappy people.
The fact that the church is shrinking, even though it's a place for happy people, makes me think that perhaps (in terms of revealed preferences, at least), people don't value happiness as highly as they used to. (Or at least that's one factor in church decline.) I think of the atheists who are very sensitive to suffering and thus find the Problem of Evil very salient. They might dislike a happy church, exactly because it's happy. Or some of the serious Christians who don't go to church (that Julia Duin talks about in her book Quitting Church) may find church to be too much about being filled and not enough about "hungering and thirsting for righteousness". Maybe a researcher could test for some of this?
Jesus asked the question, "Do you want to be healed?" to a paralytic man at the Pool of Bethesda. Sadly, the answer for many of us in a broken state, is "no." Because we don't know how to and b/c we experienced "church hurt" or religious abuse.
I’d be curious to learn whether people who attend local sporting events regularly also report higher levels of happiness.
I know your area of research and expertise is grounded in Christianity but, do the happiness findings extend to other religions say; Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism?
He included non-Christian religions in his charts and data set
Thanx Alex. I saw the World religions tag. I was just wondering whether was a more discreet breakdown available.
Makes me wonder if it has always been true? The data has shown this for several decades now, but was it true 125 years ago when religion was much more about eternal damnation and fear of the Lord? Or has this happened since religion became therapy for individualism? (Put another way, I once saw a great presentation about Noah's Ark where the scene was the dead bodies of all those who did not believe. Now it's a happy boat trip with animals.)
I've got to admit -- I think about this way too much. I'm listening to Chernow's new Twain biography. It's 44 hours long. That dude complained about everything. But he also had the right to, in my opinion. Lost his first son in infancy. His father in law (who he enjoyed) died soon after he married his wife. He was sick all the time. His wife was sick, too.
Was Twain happy? Was anyone happy? I don't know.
One of my opinions I think is a) really true and b) like Jaynes' Bicameral Mind theory, utterly impossible to prove one way or another is that people even a hundred years ago (but especially pre-Modern Era man) were so different than us and that that our definitions of "happiness" are so WEIRD/Post Modern/Individualistic/Agentic that mapping the concept onto them is a bad fit. We would be profoundly unhappy living their lives and they would probably be profoundly unhappy living ours (I think there are exceptions to this general rule), and it's probably futile to judge.
I take your point. And I loved Jayne's book back in college (one million years ago). But it's a big claim that even "happiness" is simply not comparable over a period as short as 125 years. I grant you post-modern, individual, agentic--all of it. But I'm not convinced people are that much different than they were just a century ago.
I’d venture to guess 125 years ago anyone not religious would be even more unhappy as they’d be the rare social outcasts
Thanks. I guess it depends on what one means by "religious." Estimates I've seen are that religious participation in the US was around 35% in 1900, so fairly close to today. It got much higher in the mid-20th century. But I would agree with you that more people probably believed in the supernatural and in "fate" in 1900.
the 9% don't have children yet. Once you have children, you are happier when with other parents and/or getting help from churches in raising those children.
Yes, this was my first thought. Family formation is happening for the those born in the 80s and 90s.
I was an adult evangelical for 27 years. I even went to Bible college and was involved in several church plants. I became an atheist when I was 45. I have thoughts....
I don't think that there is a god who is imparting divine happiness to anyone. I think that a lot of religious happiness revolves around community. As you say, "The most religiously active are the happiest." That is, they are the most engaged in their community, and they are connected with a group of like minds. There is tremendous human comfort to be found in community. And when we surround ourselves with people who we identify with, we lower our defenses and are at ease.
I think that most atheists tend to be solo fliers. Atheism is a minority belief in this country, so we are often seen as pariahs. Because our identifying belief is a negative, it's not obvious to most that we should gather in community and encourage one another in our non-belief.
But there are atheists and agnostics who gather together in meetups, and some who even go to church (Unitarian Universalists welcome all, even non-believers). I am a leader in an atheist non-profit group that encourages fellowship and community.
In this technological age, it's very easy for people to get disconnected and isolated. I would love to see similar studies about happiness that consider whether or not non-believers are in community. And I believe you would find that the non-believers who are active in community are just as happy as the religious folks who are active in their communities. I also suspect that you would find that folks who are isolated (both religious and non-religious) tend to be the unhappiest.
Happier people are more religious than...
This is a great discussion!
I lead a ministry organization that works with churches around outreach to families impacted by mental illness. When I look at Ryan's data, along with other recent work by the Institute for Family Studies and other research around mental illness and church attendance, multiple hypotheses come to mind:
Church attendance produces tangible mental health benefits, reported by Harold Koenig and other investigators.
Church attendance is a marker of social integration, and other avenues of social integration beyond church produce additional mental health benefits.
The presence of mental illness at an early age makes church attendance far less likely, and church attendance is far less likely for adults with significant mental health symptoms, according to Andrew Whitehead (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jssr.12521) and the Baylor Study of Religion (2011). As a result, young adults with mental illness are far less likely to have had a meaningful experience of church, and the data reflects that reality.
Political orientation represents an alternative belief system associated with catastrophic thinking, worse mental health outcomes, and for most progressives, is associated with a propensity to avoid churches where one's worldview is likely to be challenged.
Questions for Ryan regarding your last graph showing high rates of happiness among young progressives who regularly attend church. That group is very small. Anything else interesting about them demographically? So small that they're a statistical blip in the studies that show huge gaps in mental illness between young progressive and conservative women?
Did you look into the varying definitions of "happiness" among the surveyed individuals? It seems to me that it's possible that people who focus on the aftermaths of their lives might be somewhat less concerned about today's events compared to people who focus on the here and now.