Relationships Between Religiosity and Naturally Occurring Social Interaction
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Relationships Between Religiosity and Naturally Occurring Social Interaction John B. Nezlek1,2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract For 2 weeks, participants (282 US collegians) used a diary technique to describe the social interactions they had each day. These descriptions included how enjoyable the interaction was, how confident they felt, and how intimate the interaction was. They also completed a measure of Allport’s Intrinsic–Extrinsic religious orientation, the Christian Orthodoxy scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. A series of multilevel modeling analyses found that enjoyment and confidence in social interaction were positively related to the Extrinsic Personal factor of the IE scale, whereas intimacy of interactions was not related to any of these measures. These relationships remained after controlling for orthodox beliefs and depression. These results suggest that the extent to which people find comfort in religious beliefs and practices (e.g., prayer) is positively related to the quality of their daily social experiences. Keywords Social interaction · Daily diary · Religiosity · Well-being
Introduction A considerable body of research indicates that well-being, defined in various ways, is positively related to the quality of one’s social life (Cacioppo and Patrick 2008; Perlman and Vangelisti 2006). A parallel body of research indicates that religiosity is also positively related to well-being (Delle Fave et al. 2013; Newman and Graham 2018). Taken together, these two bodies of research suggest that the quality of one’s social life should be positively related to religiosity. By and large, the existing research supports such a conclusion (e.g., Lim and Putnam 2010), and the present study was designed to complement existing research. * John B. Nezlek [email protected] 1
Institute of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Kutrzeby 10, 61‑719 Poznan, Poland
2
Department of Psychological Sciences, College of William & Mary, Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Religion and Health
Participants in the present study provided measures of religiosity and of the quality of their social lives, and the general expectation was that more religious people would have more positive social lives than less religious people. We consider these relationships in more detail in the discussion section. In their review of research on religiosity and well-being, Newman and Graham (2018) noted that: “In many of these studies, religiosity has typically been measured with a single item, such as “Is religion an important part of your daily life?” or “Thinking about your life these days, how often do you attend religious services, apart from social obligations such as weddings or funerals?” Although such measures could be informative in predicting well-being, specific religious beliefs and practices could relate to well-being in nuanced ways.” Consistent with their implicit suggestion that religiosity should be measured with something more nuanced than single items, t
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