Doctoral Dissertation Research: Religiosity and Subjective and Psychological Well-being in Contemporary Society

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Doctoral Dissertation Research: Religiosity and Subjective and Psychological Well-being in Contemporary SocietyPrincipal Investigator: Christopher G. Ellison Co-Principal Investigator: Michael RoemerAbstractIn recent decades, scholars have analyzed associations between religion and well-being among predominantly Christian populations in the United States. Overall, this body of work suggests that aspects of religious involvement have salutary implications for psychological well-being. Although these research findings are compelling, it remains unclear whether they are generalizable to other religious traditions, in quite different social and cultural contexts. To address this issue, this dissertation examines connections between religious practices and beliefs and well-being in Japan. This research incorporates multiple methods, including focus groups and in-depth interviews as well as psychometric testing and multivariate analyses of data from self-administered mail surveys designed by the author and from large national datasets, to interpret intersections between individual religiosity and depression, anxiety, sense of mastery, social support, life satisfaction, and happiness. The multi-method approach and topic of this study are expected to provide a broader understanding of how religiosity is connected to well-being in contemporary Japan and how underlying mechanisms that help explain these associations may differ from previous U.S.-based research. Furthermore, this project analyzes and reveals some of the key means by which Japanese express, interpret, and maintain psychological wellness, providing us with more insight into cultural variations of mental health. Another goal is to advance quantitative measures of religiosity in Japan and add them to on-going surveys in the future, thus enabling researchers to study correlations between religious acts and beliefs and a variety of outcomes, such as attitudes, behaviors, and orientations. Finally, because the religious traditions of neighboring countries such as China and South Korea resemble Japan in terms of their emphasis on local and contextualized rituals and de-emphasis on religious organizational adherence and monotheistic beliefs, it is expected that both the process and results of asking culturally specific questions can inform investigations of religion in other societies as well. In these ways this study aims to make unique empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions to our overall understanding of religiosity and spirituality, well-being, and intersections between these social forces.