In Reply to: Re: Faith & happiness... a study posted by Farmer on March 19, 2008 at 02:11:20:
I found this report on the same study more interesting as it provides more balance, and points out various shortcomings of the study.
Most importantly, the study does not show causation between religious belief and happiness. In other words, there is nothing in the study that demonstrates religious belief itself causes more happiness, despite the headlines. There may be other factors at work.
Here's another recent study that suggests money can buy you happiness - if you spend it on others.
Of course, you have to have money to spend in the first place.
Happiness is so subjective, I wonder if these kinds of studies (remember the one that tried to rank the most happy countries) can really tell us much. I think its much like studies of pain that use various scales for people to rate their pain. On a scale of 1 to 10, for example, with 10 being the severest pain, how can a person really differentiate between 7 and 8. And what is 8 to one person might be 6 to another, since different people have different pain tolerance levels. I think we experience things like happiness and pain differently so how accurate are these kinds of comparative studies?