Happiness, health, and religiosity: Significant relations

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the present work was to test for an association between, and gender differences in, happiness, physical health, mental health, and religiosity. Four separate self-rating scales of these variables with good retest reliability were used. The sample comprised 2,210 male (n = 1,056) and female (n = 1,154) volunteer Kuwaiti undergraduates. Males had a significantly higher self-rating mean score of happiness and mental health than females, while females had a significantly higher religiosity mean score than their male counterparts. All the inter-correlations between the four self-ratings were significant and positive. They yielded one high loaded factor. Though the loadings were all high (>0.51), the ratings for happiness and mental health had the highest loadings (>0.82). Multiple regression revealed that the main predictor of happiness was mental health. Mental health accounted for 60% of the variance in predicting happiness, while religiosity accounted for around 15% of the variance in predicting happiness. However, the self-rating of physical health did not contribute significantly to the prediction of happiness. Based on the self-rating scales, the current data provide strong evidence that, among a large sample of Kuwaiti Muslim undergraduate students, religious people are happier. Acknowledgements I thank the Editor-in-Chief of this periodical, as well as Dr Christopher Alan Lewis, and an anonymous reviewer for the helpful comments on this manuscript.