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Religiosity, Spirituality, and Well-Being in Emerging Adulthood

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Anișoara Pavelea and Lorina Culic

Submitted: 22 August 2023 Reviewed: 20 November 2023 Published: 14 December 2023

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.113963

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The Social Contexts of Young People Engaging Youth and Young Adults Edited by Patricia Herzog

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The Social Contexts of Young People - Engaging Youth and Young Adults

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Abstract

This chapter analyzes the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being in emerging adulthood. A primary contribution of this analysis is an examination of possible mediators. The examined mediators are satisfaction with life, meaning in life, and perceived health. Participants in the study are 319 Romanian social sciences students, aged between 18 and 24 (Mage = 19,87, SDage = 1,39), urban (82%), mostly female (76%), and orthodox (74%). The results of the study confirm that religiosity and spirituality are important protective factors. Well-being is higher for emerging adults who rate their mental health highly, and this appears to mediate the religiosity-well-being relationship. Implications for therapeutic practice and communication between counselors and clients are discussed at the end of the paper.

Keywords

  • religiosity and spirituality
  • health
  • meaning in life
  • satisfaction with life
  • well-being
  • emerging adults

1. Introduction

Religion has been considered for a long time an important psychological factor that can influence many people’s lives under multiple aspects [1, 2, 3], providing an identity, useful social support, and a coherent framework for finding answers to existential questions [4]. Religion offers to some individuals a higher level of satisfaction with life [5, 6], helps reduce depressive symptoms and anxiety levels, increases optimism level, and enables them to better emotionally adapt to difficult times [7, 8], overcoming traumatic experiences and loss [9]. Previous research showed that religiosity and spirituality are both strongly associated with mental health [10, 11] and well-being [12, 13].

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2. Religiosity and spirituality

The distinction between religiosity and spirituality has long been debated within the psychology of religion, a science with “a long past but a short history” [14], and “long on data and short on theory” [15]. For decades, even though the most relevant papers in the psychology of religion [8, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20] have approached the history of the domain, its topics, main concepts, and dimensions of religiosity and spirituality, they have failed to offer an integrative framework or a conceptual model that would allow researchers to think, integrate, and develop new theories and hypotheses [21].

Different definitions have been given to religion over time. Starting with Allport’s [22] famous contrast between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, the first one refers to individuals who live their religion and see religious faith as a goal, and the second denotes the use of religion strictly in a utilitarian sense, for the attainment of social gains. While Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi [23] regard religion substantially as “a system of beliefs in a divine or superhuman power, and practices of worship or other rituals directed toward such power” [p. 1], Dollahite [24] refers to it as “a covenant faith community with teachings and narratives that enhance the search for the sacred” [p. 5], and Peteet [25] emphasizes upon “the commitment to beliefs and practices characteristic of particular traditions” [p. 237].

Spirituality has also captured several views over time, from Peck [26] quoting Elkins et al.’s perspective of “a way of being and experiencing that comes about through the awareness of a transcendent dimension and that is characterized by certain identifiable values regarding the self, life, and whatever one considers to be the ultimate” [p. 10], to Doyle’s [27] “search for existential meaning” [p. 302] or Armstrong’s [28] “presence of a relationship with a Higher Power that affects the way in which one operates in the world” [p. 3]. Today’s increasing tendency of embracing spirituality over religiosity can be explained by looking at the individualistic times we travel and analyzing the decrease in traditional authority and the continuous rejection of cultural norms, especially by the younger generation.

Mirroring the scientific literature, in time, the public’s perception of the two terms has long evolved. Therefore, today, the great majority of individuals refer to religion as primarily being associated with religious practices and engagement, so to say with the organizational aspects of faith, while spirituality tends to be associated with the subjective search for meaning and for the sacred in a diversity of traditional and nontraditional settings: from prayer to meditation, from church, synagogue, and mosque attendance, to feasting and religious document study, to monastic life and walking in nature, sexuality, social actions, psychotherapy, or listening to symphonic compositions [29]. Despite the long debates over the definitions of religiosity and spirituality, most authors today agree that both spirituality and religion are complex, latent, multidimensional, and multilevel concepts [30] and tend to agree that the blind distinction between religiosity and spirituality is “a dangerous road to be traveled” [31, 32]. Even though religion has long been regarded as dogmatic and rigid, static, and institutional, based on faith, and measured through practices and religious engagement, spirituality was seen, in opposition, as subjective, emanating from personal experience, based on self-determination and personal development, functional, and dynamic. Not without difficulty, bridging points have been identified between the two converging views under concepts like a sense of meaning and purpose in life [33], connecting to self, to others, and to the transcendent [34, 35] or the belief in a unifying force [36, 37]. We have to agree that both religiousness and spirituality can be understood as active processes of self-discovery and self-transformation.

By overcoming the prejudicial labeling of religiousness and spirituality and embracing a wider image of the two sides of one coin, psychology of religion studies could align, as Park [38] says, with the latest trends emerging from positive psychology, medicine, and neuroscience.

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3. Religiosity, spirituality, and health

Multiple studies have analyzed the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and health. American Psychologist has dedicated an entire 2003 issue to it and recent clinical psychology and psychotherapy handbooks encompass increasingly results coming from the psychology of religion into their psychological and medical practices. Recently, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being has been investigated, with multiple studies showing that religiosity and spirituality is still a crucial resource during difficult life events [39, 40, 41]. In a meta-analysis, based on 75 studies (ranging from 1990 to 2010), approaching the relationship between spirituality, religiosity, and other psychological variables in adolescents and emerging adults (N = 66.273), Yonker et al. [42] have found that religiosity and spirituality have a positive effect on health, with significant effect sizes of religiosity and spirituality on risk behavior, −.17, depression, −.11, well-being, .16, and self-esteem, .11. In line with these results, Green and Elliot [43] found that religiosity has a strong effect on happiness and health, regardless of religious affiliation, religious activities, job satisfaction, marital happiness, social support, or financial status. Other studies have shown there is a link between religiosity and spirituality constructs, such as closeness to God [44, 45], motivating forces [46], religious support [47, 48], and religious and spiritual struggle [16, 49, 50]. McCullough et al.’s [51] meta-analysis, based on 42 independent samples, has shown a significant positive correlation between religious involvement (especially church attendance) and lower mortality. Attending worship once a week tends to have an effect on a higher life expectancy of 7 to 14 years [52]. Comparable results were found by Lucchetti et al. [53] and Powell et al. [54] who have shown that religiosity and spirituality reduce the mortality rate by up to 24%.

Other studies, especially cross-sectional ones, have drawn the conclusion that people with higher religious involvement tend to engage less frequently in sexually risky behaviors and substance abuse, while in some cases exercising more and following a healthy diet [55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61]. In a longitudinal study, expanded over three decades, Strawbridge et al. [62] found that, especially for women, weekly attendance at religious services is associated with improved mental health, more satisfying social relationships, and marital stability. Other studies [63] indicate that religious families benefit from stronger social support and report lower divorce rates and more stable social climate, with positive parental practices and better child adjustment.

The link between religiosity, spirituality, and religious coping has been studied extensively and authors like Pargament [8, 41] and Lee [64] have shown that religious and spiritual people tend to use coping mechanisms more effectively, enabling them to deal with stressful situations and to maintain a higher level of general health and life satisfaction.

The meta-analytic research conducted by Smith et al. [2], based on 147 independent studies (N = 98.975), identified a modest negative correlation of −.09 between religiousness and depressive symptoms, with the results not being moderated by gender, age, or ethnicity. Still, for those individuals who avoid difficulties through religious activities and blame God for their tragedy, higher levels of depressive symptoms were registered. In other words, these are people with negative religious coping and extrinsic religious orientation. Braam et al. [65] found similar results after developing a longitudinal study in the Netherlands, with a representative national sample of 1840 people aged between 55 and 85.

Religious participation was also found to be a strong protective factor against suicide, even after controlling for gender, age, race, marital status, and social contact frequency [66]. People who attend worship places regularly are four times less inclined to have suicidal thoughts and attempts, even among clinical populations.

Attitudes toward forgiveness, which are important in most religious and spiritual traditions, may have significant consequences on health by reducing rumination, facilitating the emergence of positive emotions and more adaptive coping strategies, and, therefore, reducing the level of chronic stress [67, 68]. Moreover, religious and spiritual people use preventive medical services more frequently and report higher levels of treatment compliance [69]. Like religiosity, spirituality has been shown to have strong links to both mental and physical health [70, 71].

In conclusion, research approaching the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and health [7, 56, 72, 73] uncovered five main potential complex and multi-faceted mechanisms that seem to be consistent across cultures and countries:

  1. Behaviors. Religious and spiritual persons support healthy behaviors (such as physical exercise, walking in nature, relaxation, meditation, mindfulness, and yoga) and discourage tobacco and alcohol consumption, drugs, excessive eating, and nonmarital risky sex.

  2. Physiological states. Religiosity and spirituality can bolster general health through positive emotions, such as happiness, joy, enthusiasm, gratitude, contentment, compassion, hope, and awe.

  3. Coping mechanisms. In the face of adversity and stressful life events, people displaying a higher degree of religiosity and spirituality feel more equipped to deal with the hardiness of life, relying on meaning, life satisfaction, optimism, and self-esteem.

  4. Social support. The believers tend to have a larger support network, providing more fulfilling relationships with others, offering them assistance in diverse situations, feeling a sense of belonging to a community, and experiencing a higher group cohesion. Places of worship integrate families, support volunteering and community building, enable the organization of large events, and facilitate tangible exchanges like help and advice.

  5. “Psi” mechanisms or positive energies, which even though they do not have full support within the scientific community, are increasingly appealing to the public and used as explanatory mechanisms in alternative therapies.

    Still, most studies conclude that these mechanisms are interdependent, and their methodological designs try to isolate and control variables, to test more and more complex mediation and moderation models.

As Oman & Thoresen [56] say: “The present is an extremely exciting time for the emerging transdisciplinary field of religion, spirituality, and health. […] Many psychologists and religionists, but perhaps not enough, are moving beyond earlier mutual stereotypes and learning to collaborate. Only through such collaboration, we believe, can we apply the fullest range of knowledge and wisdom to fostering human health and well-being in the context of today’s dire global needs” [p. 455].

Even though most of the studies focus on the positive influence of religiosity and spirituality on well-being, some of them also cover the downsides, such as refusing to receive medical treatment, to vaccinate children, to accept blood transfusions [69], or becoming victims of physical and sexual abuse [74, 75].

Given the difficulties in operationalizing the complexity of the meanings of spirituality and religiosity, few empirical studies on well-being have concentrated on the spiritual aspects of behavior. Most studies based on national samples have used a single dimension of religion, like religious attendance, due to the fact that researchers fail to come to a common ground when they speak of religiosity and spirituality dimensions and their relationship, either positive or negative, to subjective well-being [76]. Therefore, recent studies signal the importance of approaching the link between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being in a multidimensional manner [47, 77].

Bearing that in mind, the current research measures religiosity and spirituality based on ten subscales, in a sample of Christian urban emerging adults, with a university background. Satisfaction with life, meaning in life, and perceived physical and mental health are used as mediators in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

The study of religiousness in youth sets a series of challenges due to age, as well as ample physical and cognitive development, changes in relation to the social environment, autonomy, and societal expectations. Emerging adulthood is an age proposed by Arnett [78], as an accurate description of individuals ages 18 to 24 (extended afterward to 29), from industrial societies. It is characterized by multiple attempts at exploration and examination of potential trajectories, a process that eases the stabilization of roles and engagements in areas like personal relationships, work, and perspectives on life. The five aspects defining emerging adulthood are: identity exploration, being self-focused, dealing with a high level of instability, “feeling in-between,” and experiencing a sense of multiple possibilities for the future. Moving away from family, gaining autonomy, and developing relationships with diverse people holding different worldviews and opinions may intensify individuals’ identity exploration providing them with a safe space to explore and to renegotiate their religiosity [79]. It is an age when youth redefines their relationship with religiosity and spirituality, tries to answer manifold questions regarding the transcendent, tries to experiment with multiple orientations, and seeks individual answers to spiritual quests.

Which is the role religiosity and spirituality play in potentiating subjective well-being and how emerging adults’ health can influence this outcome is the main question of our study.

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4. Research objectives

The main objective of the study revolves around testing the mediating role of meaning in life, satisfaction with life, and health in the relationship between emerging adults’ religiosity, spirituality, and well-being. Three mediation models will be run to see which of these three mediators explains a higher percentage of the above-mentioned relationship.

H2: Meaning in life mediates the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being in emerging adults.

H3: Emerging adults’ perceived physical (H3a) and mental health (H3b) mediates the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

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5. Method

5.1 Participants

Participants in the study are 319 Caucasian social sciences students, aged between 18 and 24 (Mage = 19,87, SDage = 1,39), urban (82%), predominantly women (76%), and orthodox (74%). Answers were collected online. All participants have completed an informal consent and have been informed concerning the privacy of personal data.

5.1.1 Measures

  1. Brief multidimensional measure of religiousness and spirituality [47], encompasses three dimensions of religiosity: emotional/subjective, behavioral, and cognitive. The scale has been used extensively for different age groups, including adolescents, emerging adults, and elderly [80, 81, 82]. It includes 10 subscales: daily religious experiences, organizational religiousness, commitment, private religious practices, beliefs/values, forgiving, religious and spiritual coping, religious support, overall self-ranking, and meaning. The first dimension, the emotional one, includes daily spiritual experiences (six items, Cronbach’s a = .87) [83]. The second one comprises behaviors referring to organizational religiousness (2 items: 7,8), commitment (items 9,31), and religious practices (items 10–14). The third dimension—cognitive—includes seven items (Cronbach’s α = .80): values/beliefs (items 15,16), beliefs about forgiveness (items 17–19), and meaning (items 34,35). The overall religiosity and spirituality self-ranking were assessed through two items (32,33). Answers were registered using a Likert scale from one indicating the lowest level to four, six, or eight (the highest).

  2. Perceived health was assessed using two items: 1. In general, how would you label your physical health? 2. How would you label your psychological health? Answers were registered on a nine-point Likert scale (from (1) terribly rickety to (9) excellent).

  3. Life satisfaction scale [84], composed of five items, scored from one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree), with excellent psychometric properties (Cronbach’s α = .87). The overall score ranges from 5 to 35, with higher levels indicating sterling life satisfaction. It is one of the most often used scales for testing life satisfaction and its psychometric properties have been tested by multiple researchers [85, 86, 87]. Poff et al. Diener [88], who gave a wide definition to life satisfaction, seen as “a conscious cognitive judgment of one’s life in which the criteria for judgment are up to the person” and the scale has been designed to assess the life satisfaction with the respondent’s life as a whole, not focusing on different life domains.

  4. Meaning in life [89] is a bidimensional scale, including the presence of meaning (5 items; ex. “My life has a clear sense of purpose,” Cronbach’s a = .83) and search for meaning (“I am seeking a purpose of meaning for my life,” Cronbach’s a = .88). Answers are registered on a seven-point Likert scale, ranging from (1) completely false) to (7) completely true. The scale has good internal consistency, has been translated to more than 20 languages, and is used extensively in ample research, in studies like Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative [90], or the International Wellbeing Study, conducted by Aaron Jarden, president of New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology [91].

  5. The well-being scale [92] consists of 18 items, three statements for each of its six areas of psychological well-being: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Respondents rate statements on a scale of one (indicating strong disagreement) to six (strong agreement). Cronbach’s α = .75.

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6. Results

6.1 Preliminary analyses

Descriptive statistics and the correlation matrix of study variables are presented in Table 1. All scales present good psychometric properties. Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality has a Cronbach’s α of .95, perceived health .66, satisfaction with life .87, presence of meaning in life .83, .88 for search for meaning, and .75 for well-being. Almost all correlations were statistically significant, except the one with age.

Observed variablesMSD1234567
1Age19.871.391
2Religiosity89.4827.66.0101
3Satisfaction with life25.776.35−.022.300**1
4Presence of meaning15.914.25.008,345**.560**1
5Search for meaning17.934.87−.086.056−.129**-,240**1
6Physical health6.501.40.031.171**.362**363**−.130**1
7Psychological health6.201.73.057.203**.569**.509**−.163**.510**1
8Well-being77.4810.25.151**.190**.527**.497**−.148**.322**.473**

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients for observed variables.

Note. N = 319, *p < .05 (two-tailed), ** p < .01 (two-tailed).

6.2 Measurement models

The confirmatory factor analysis indicated a main factor for Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality explaining over 43% of the variance, one for life satisfaction (68%) and two factors for meaning in life, in accordance with the literature [89], namely, presence of meaning and search for meaning.

6.3 Mediation analysis

Using Hayes PROCESS 3.4, we ran the mediation analysis, running the fourth model (Figure 1 and Table 2) [89, 93].

Figure 1.

Simple mediation model for satisfaction in life as a moderator for the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

PredictorMediatorCriteriaEstimate95% CI
1ReligiositySatisfaction with lifeWell-being.05[.03, .05]
2ReligiosityPresence of meaningWell-being.06[.04, .08]
3ReligiosityMental healthWell-being.03[.01, .09]

Table 2.

Unstandardized indirect effects with bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals.

Note. *p < .05.

H1: Satisfaction with life mediates the relationship between emerging adults’ religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

After running Hayes model of mediation, we can observe that for a sample of 319, the effect of religiosity and spirituality on satisfaction with life is statistically significant, a = .06, t(317) = 5.60, 95% CI [.04, .92], p < .00. Same for life satisfaction’s effect on emerging adults well-being, b = .83, t(316) = 10.30, 95% CI [.67, .99], p < .00. After introducing satisfaction with life mediates in the model, religiosity, and spirituality loses its effect on well-being (c’ = .01, t(316) = 0.70, 95% CI [−.02, .04], p = 0.48). Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality’s indirect effect on well-being through satisfaction with life is statistically significant, IE = ab = .05, 95% CI. Results show that 71% of the total effect of religiosity and spirituality on well-being is explained by the satisfaction with life and only 29% operates directly.

H2: Meaning in life, with its two components, presence in life (H2a), and search for meaning (H2b) is a mediator of the relationship between emerging adults’ religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

The mediation analysis shows a direct relationship between religiosity and spirituality and meaning in life (a = .06, t(317) = 5.77, 95% CI [.04, .08], p < .00), and between meaning in life and well-being (b = .37, t(316) = 3.65, 95% CI [.17, .58]. p < .00). After introducing meaning in life in the mediation model, religiosity and spirituality holds its effect on well-being (c’ = .04, t(316) = 2.22, 95% CI [.00, .08], p = .02), indicating that the meaning in life cannot be considered a mediator in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being. Therefore, we have decided to run the mediation model separately for the two dimensions of the scale: the presence of meaning and search for meaning. It was only the presence of meaning that has proved to be a mediator in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being (IE = ab = .06, 95% BootCI [.04, .08], p = .02), explaining 88% of the total effect (R = .49, F = 52.01, p < .00) (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Simple mediation model for the presence of meaning as a mediator in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

H3: Emerging adults’ perceived status of physical (H3a) and mental health (H3b) mediates the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

When analyzing physical health as a mediator of religiosity, spirituality, and well-being, we have identified a direct effect between religiosity, spirituality, and physical health (a = .01, t(316) = 3.09, 95% CI [.00, .01], p < .00), also a direct effect for the relationship between physical health and well-being (b = 2.17, t(316) = 5.57, 95% CI [1.40, 2.94], p < .00), but when introducing the mediator, the direct effect between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being was held (c’ = .05, t(316) = 2.60, 95% CI [.01, .09], p < .00) and, therefore, we had to reject the hypothesis (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Simple mediation model for physical health as a mediator in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

For H3b, although the perceived mental health status proved to be a good mediator in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being, the data showed a direct effect of religiosity on mental health (a = .01, t(316) = 3.45, 95% CI [.58, .02], p < .00) and a similar one for students’ mental health and well-being (b = 2.71, t(316) = 8.67, 95% CI [2.09, 3.32], p < .00) (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Simple mediation model for psychological health as a mediator in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being.

After introducing the perceived mental health as a mediator, the indirect effect of religiosity and spirituality on well-being is .03, 95% BootCI [.00, .09]), representing 79% of the total effect (R = .47, F = 40.19).

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7. Conclusions and discussion

Hypotheses H1, H2a, and H3b are supported, indicating that satisfaction with life, presence of meaning, and perceived mental health status are mediators of the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being, explaining similar percentages of the relationship with 71, 88, and 79%, respectively. Even though previous studies show that meaning in life mediates the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being, the results do not fully sustain this conclusion. One explanation would be that emerging adults are at the age of defining their identity, searching for meaning in life, exploring identity statuses, and for those who have already found a purpose in life, religiosity, and spirituality can provide an enhanced well-being. These individuals feel the need to identify the meaning and the significance of their existence, a mission beyond the daily agenda, and the fact that they can find a life goal that satisfies their expectations, dreams, and hopes, seems to be enough to ensure them a comfortable psychological well-being. Religion, through its teachings, beliefs, commitment, spiritual experiences, and practices, can shape their purpose in life. It helps emerging adults frame their identity facets in a coherent image, congruent with their vision of the world. Religiosity and spirituality can offer a coherent framework for finding answers to existential questions, as Elliott and Hayward [4] assert.

Satisfaction with life could be the missing link between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being in emerging adults. Individuals reporting higher religiosity and spirituality tend to appreciate more positive aspects of their lives, to be grateful for what they have, and to be satisfied with the conditions of their lives more than those who do not use this filter. Religion insists upon forgiveness and making peace with the past.

It is therefore understood why the perceived mental health status mediates the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being, as those who identify with a better mental health tend to assign it to religiosity and spirituality and to translate it in terms of subjective well-being, due to the fact that they see themselves in a positive light, have meaningful relationships with others, embrace their flaws and try to integrate them in a coherent life story, they find that they benefit from unconditional support when dealing with difficult problems, hold faith that someone is watching over them and guides their steps toward positive actions. Still, one must take into account that holding responsibility for his/her life and using free will ties with a strong sense of duty for oneself and others.

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8. Limitations of the research

Next to its contributions, the current study has several limitations. First, it is a cross-sectional study, testing differences between, not within individuals, the reason why the results could reflect more the characteristics of the sample, related to the moment of the research, to the composition, cultural, social, and religious characteristics of the sample. Based on a relatively homogenous sample of university students, predominantly orthodox, urban, and educated, caution is recommended in trying to generalize the results to the entire category of emerging adults. Even though mediation models test direct links and effects, longitudinal studies with several waves of collecting data could be more efficient in capturing these relationships and could supplement the knowledge volume with valuable insights.

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9. Implications and future research perspectives

Studying the link between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being in emerging adults allows career counselors, personal development advisors, psychologists, and psychotherapists who are less inclined to embrace religious phenomena to understand their clients’ perspective and to use a wider analysis grid. By framing the ten subscales of Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality, psychologists can find valuable anchors for building the therapeutic relationship, for developing topics of discussion and therapy, according to each client’s characteristics and situation. This way, they can better understand the needs and concerns of their clients, identifying the role of religiosity and spirituality in reaching, and maintaining psychological well-being. Discussing with them about life satisfaction, meaning in life, and other aspects related to psychological health could open a window of opportunities for implementing effective therapeutic strategies.

The results support Moreira-Almeida et al. [94] perspective, who claim that through gaining a better understanding of the importance of religious aspects in individuals’ lives, psychologists and counselors will be better equipped at providing mental health services, and through rigorous research, new ways of relieving pain and suffering can be found. Following Pargament’s line of work [8], this chapter has shown that religiosity and spirituality influence our mental health and well-being. An in-depth understanding of religiosity and spirituality will allow psychologists, counselors, and other mental health providers to fulfill their mission of alleviating suffering and helping people live meaningful lives [94].

Numerous studies have shown that religiosity and spirituality play a significant role in enhancing individuals’ psychological well-being, but given the fact that religiosity and spirituality are multidimensional, latent, and multilevel concepts, lines of investigation need to be expanded, mediation, moderation, and structural equation modeling and big data studies need to be conducted in order to advance knowledge in the field. Using Herzog’s typology of emerging adults’ religiosity [95] and using more heterogeneous samples could provide a more nuanced image of the phenomenon. A better collaboration between researchers coming from different areas and fields of research, with different cultural backgrounds, looking at an old topic from a new angle, setting aside all preconceptions and stereotypes, and focusing on research implications for individuals’ well-being is welcome.

In today’s increasingly polarized societies, where religion still plays a significant role, religiosity and spirituality can act as integrating factors, offering psychological comfort and well-being, and gathering public opinion and debate around a common ground, like finding meaning and purpose through the cultivation of positive values.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by CORE—Communication and Social Innovation Research Centre, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania, and by the 2022–2023 Babes-Bolyai Development Fund.

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Written By

Anișoara Pavelea and Lorina Culic

Submitted: 22 August 2023 Reviewed: 20 November 2023 Published: 14 December 2023

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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