TWISS #4: Religion, Science, and Well-being
Religion and Science. Are they good for us?
Welcome to This Week in Social Science. This edition examines how science and religion can affect our well-being, starting with a new psychological concept called Spirituality of Science, and looking at how religious activity changes how much we interact with other people. As a bonus, this edition includes a brief review of a paper on predicting the outcomes of Papal conclaves.
Can science be spiritual? And can it help us if it is?
“When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.” - American astronomer, Carl Sagan
In a paper published this year, researchers looked into a concept they called Spirituality of Science, to understand the feeling that Carl Sagan and other scientists have described. In three studies, they developed a scale of Spirituality of Science, and tested how it was related to overall well-being and sense of meaning in life. They found that, among atheists and agnostics (who were not generally spiritual), the more that a person found spirituality in science, the more happiness, the better well-being, and the more meaning in life they had. The researchers suggest that finding awe and humility in science may provide many similar benefits to finding those feelings in religion. This research makes me wonder that maybe many of us need something in life that can make us feel special but also humble, something that tells us why we exist but doesn’t make us feel dangerously important. Maybe we find that in religion and maybe in science. Also, what do you think about this new concept of Spirituality in Science? When you look at the questions and items the researchers used to measure this idea, do you think that they’re really capturing the idea of finding spirituality in science?1
How religious activity affects our well-being
Research has consistently shown that religious involvement and engagement seem to be connected to better overall well-being. But why is that? A recent study investigated the role of religious activity in well-being using a unique dataset. The researcher looked at the American Time-Use Survey, which used a diary approach to ask people how they spend their time and how each activity makes them feel. The research focused on how people spend their Sundays, and found that church-goers spend over an hour more on average in social engagement with extended family and friends, and overall have more pleasant experiences, than non church-goers. Drawing on data from a Gallup poll, the research also finds that people who attend religious services weekly are emotionally better off not just on the day of worship itself but throughout the week, compared to people who attend less often or not at all. Does this mean we should all find religion? Not necessarily. But it does emphasize the value of consistent and low-effort social engagement, and how the benefits persist throughout the week. While there’s no reason why a non church-goer can’t have an equally social Sunday, social engagements likely take effort to organize and seem less likely to occur.2
Bonus science! The predictability of the Papal conclave
This week saw the sad news of the passing of Pope Francis, and in the coming weeks there will be a Papal conclave to choose the next Pope and the direction of the Catholic Church. An interesting 2014 study on betting odds for Papal elections can give us some insight into how predictable the Papal conclaves can be. Using data on betting odds which go back 500 years, the research found that initial betting odds on who the next Pope would be were often wrong, and can’t be easily predicted in advance. But a deeper dive into the information available throughout the 2013 conclave also indicates that the betting market could do a better job of integrating available information to make more accurate predictions. This tells us that who the next Pope will be is not a foregone conclusion, and whether through the Holy Spirit or strategic voting, there is much left to be decided.3
Preston, J. L., Coleman III, T. J., & Shin, F. (2025). Spirituality of science: Implications for meaning, well-being, and learning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 51(4), 632-643.
Lim, C. (2016). Religion, time use, and affective well-being. Sociological Science, 3, 685-709.
Vaughan Williams, L., & Paton, D. (2015). Forecasting the Outcome of Closed‐Door Decisions: Evidence from 500 Years of Betting on Papal Conclaves. Journal of Forecasting, 34(5), 391-404.
I loved these articles. I love that one of the effects of church is lowering the costs to social engagement. People would love to interact with others, but making that happen is another story.
The spirituality of science article is also quite interesting. It does seem like science has replaced religion for many people, and I wonder about the consequences of that replacement. What are the main things that religion gives that science does not, or that science gives that religion does not?