Religiosity, desired emotions, and well-being – a comparative study of Roman Catholics and Pentecostal Christians in Poland

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to compare interdenominational differences in how religiosity is related to life satisfaction, meaning in life, desired and experienced emotions. The two groups included were Roman Catholics (n₁ = 145) and Pentecostals (n₂ = 133). The study confirmed the positive relationship between religiosity and life satisfaction as well as meaning in life for the whole sample. Moreover, it was found that Pentecostals reported higher religiosity, meaning in life, social support, and desired emotions strengthening religious beliefs than Catholics. In both groups, a partial mediation of belongingness and identification was observed in the relationship between religiosity and meaning in life. For social support, however, it was established that the mediating effect was stronger in Pentecostals than in Catholics. These results suggest that life satisfaction and meaning in life may be determined both by general factors related to religious involvement as well as by certain specific features of a given denomination.

KEYWORDS:

• Religiosity
• desired emotions
• experienced emotions
• meaning of life
• well-being

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The retrospective ethical approval was granted by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Poland (number of approval: 11/11/2022).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support current findings are openly available through the Figshare repository at https://figshare.com/s/200465c515a3993ee949

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Foundation for Polish Science: [Grant Number START 041.2022].