Atheistic, agnostic, and religious older adults on well-being and coping behaviors

Unbelievable?! Theistic/Epistemological Viewpoint Affects Religion–Health Relationship

“…Similarly, the Deist category only indicated a belief in a god, without a corresponding indication of confidence. Finally, the GSS lacked items addressing social support, which is a covariate that promotes health (Fowler et al 2013) and is often linked to attending church (e.g., Horning et al 2011). This lack of covariate control limited the ability of the current study to discuss the extent of the relationship between the R/S index and health outcomes.…”

“…Generally, it has been established that attending church (Levin and Chatters 1998;OkuliczKozaryn 2010;Strawbridge et al 2001), praying (Levin and Chatters), and/or self-reported religiosity (Gauthier et al 2006;Horning et al 2011;Levin and Chatters) positively predict subjective well-being. While these R/S constructs (attendance, prayer, and religiosity) are well represented within the existing literature, the field as a whole is far from monolithic in its outlook.…”

Dogmatism, coping, and spirituality : predicting mental health among the religious and the secular.

“…A notable finding from the religious/spiritual coping analyses was the evidence that secular participants were also using religious/spiritual coping and from a correlational standpoint these coping behaviors appeared to associate with more favorable mental health levels. Horning et al (2011) found that religious coping was used in differing amounts between religious and secular participants and the current study confirmed those findings by also finding that religious adherents used religious/spiritual coping more frequently. The current study's religious/spiritual coping scale allowed for a possible mean value between 1 and 4.…”

“…A sample item includes "I try to find comfort in my religious or spiritual beliefs." The Brief COPE is frequently used in the coping literature and has also been used with a similar sample of secular and religious participants (Horning et al, 2011). …”

“…This study suggested that secular coping can be advantageous and does not necessarily co-occur with religious coping despite religious coping sometimes demonstrating as the most popular method of coping (Conway, 1985-86). Elsewhere, no mental health differences were found between secular and religious groups despite the religious participants showing a substantially large effect (η 2 = .68) regarding their use of religious coping (Horning, Davis, Stirrat, and Cornwell, 2011). Horning et al is perhaps the only study of its kind that directly investigated religious and secular coping styles that actually included secular comparison groups.…”