Social psychologists have often followed other scientists in treating religiosity primarily as a set of beliefs held by individuals. But, beliefs are only one facet of this complex and multidimensional construct. The authors argue that social psychology can best contribute to scholarship on religion by being relentlessly social. They begin with a social-functionalist approach in which beliefs, ...

The purpose of this study was to determine the role of religious involvement and related indicators - religious coping, intrinsic religiosity, forgiveness and gratitude - in reducing the negative impact of early traumatic stress on the mental and physical health of adult survivors. Multiple linear regressions were used to analyze self-reported data of 10,283 Seventh-day Adventist men and women ...

BACKGROUND As a result of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, many people have been affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Considering that religion plays an important role in both of these countries and that religiosity/spirituality can be a positive coping resource, we were interested in investigating the spiritual needs of PTSD patients in these countries. Also, we aimed ...

The relationship between religiosity and educational attainment is an important question in the sociology of religion literature. It is widely contested whether the natural outgrowth of the spreading rational worldview and the increase of educated people can account for the decline of religious adherence. Is there any other explanation for the different opportunities of religious and non-religi...

Numerous authors have suggested that religious belief has a positive association, possibly causal, with prosocial behavior. This article critiques evidence regarding this "religious prosociality" hypothesis from several areas of the literature. The extant literature on religious prosociality is reviewed including domains of charity, volunteering, morality, personality, and well-being. The exper...

BACKGROUND The objective of this paper is to explore the connection between self-reported health and religiosity among Israeli Jews, using several self-reported health measures. METHODS Data were collected by two health surveys covering 1999 individuals in 1993 and 2505 individuals in 2000, representing the population of Jewish Israelis aged 45-75 years residing in urban communities in those ...

Recent reviews suggest that religiosity is associated with the delay of adolescent coital debut (Rostosky, Wilcox, Wright, Randall, in press; Wilcox, Rostosky, Randall, Wright, 2001). Few studies, however, have examined this association using longitudinal data to test theoretically driven models. We analyzed data from 3,691 adolescents (ages 15-21), testing the hypothesis that adolescent religi...

Data from emerging adults (ages 18-29, N = 900) in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Study was used to examine the influence of childhood and emerging adult religiosity and religious-based decision-making, and childhood adversity, on alcohol use. Childhood religiosity was protective against early alcohol use and progression to later abuse or dependence, but did not significantly offse...

Background To determine the relationships between religiosity, religions and glycaemic control of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D).Methods This is a cross-sectional study conducted at an urban, university-based, teaching outpatient clinic. Religiosity was assessed with the Beliefs and Values Scale (BV), which contains 20 items each with a Likert scale of five possible responses. The range of scor...