Abstract
The aim of this chapter was to explore perceived happiness and meaningfulness experienced by 666 adults in the spirituality/religiousness life domain across seven Western countries. Participants concurrently evaluated spirituality and religiosity with regard to their perceived levels of happiness and meaningfulness. Results showed significant cross-country differences in happiness and meaningfulness ratings in the spiritual/religious domain. Findings indicated that religion is perceived to be strongly associated with spirituality but spirituality need not be associated with religion. We also identified groups of individuals with similar profiles of spiritual/religious happiness and meaningfulness and compared the overall levels well-being of these groups across countries. Individuals high in spiritual meaning and happiness were more satisfied with their lives and reported higher general meaning and happiness ratings than participants in the other three clusters. As expected, participants reporting low happiness and meaningfulness in the spiritual/religious domain had the lowest level of meaning. In most countries, high spiritual/religious happiness ratings (in the absence of high meaning ratings) were associated with higher satisfaction with life and general happiness, than were high spiritual/religious meaningfulness ratings (in the absence of high happiness ratings). Conversely, high levels of spiritual/religious meaning overall contributed to well-being in terms of meaningfulness in general. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between hedonic and eudaemonic components of well-being and more specifically between happiness and meaningfulness.
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Fave, A.D., Brdar, I., Vella-Brodrick, D., Wissing, M.P. (2013). Religion, Spirituality, and Well-Being Across Nations: The Eudaemonic and Hedonic Happiness Investigation. In: Knoop, H., Delle Fave, A. (eds) Well-Being and Cultures. Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4611-4_8
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