A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported beta = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported beta = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates.

Automated summary

The relation between religiosity and well-being was investigated using a new cross-cultural dataset, and the results showed that most teams reported a positive relationship, with religiosity being associated with higher levels of well-being. Additionally, the results indicated that the relation between religiosity and well-being varied depending on the cultural norms of religion.