Seeing God’s Hand in the Everyday Stokes Happiness for Religious Folks

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on PsychCentral.

For the study, Dr. Jonathan Ramsay, a Senior Lecturer in psychology at James Cook University’s Singapore campus, and his research team surveyed 231 people from a diverse mix of Christians, Buddhists or Taoists, Muslims and people with no religious affiliation.

According to Ramsay, all world religions believe that the universe has an underlying order and structure that gives greater meaning or significance to events and circumstances.

“What we were interested in is if the believer interprets events in this fashion, does it influence their emotional reaction to those events, and eventually their general sense of well-being?” he noted.

The study’s findings show that all people, but especially religious people, regularly assign significance to unremarkable events, such as discussing hobbies with a work colleague, receiving a small but unexpected gift, or spending time with a family member.

“We found the more people gave meaning, purpose, and significance to such events the more they experienced positive emotions such as gratitude and contentment,” he said.

Previous research had shown a link between meaningfulness and religion and well-being, but this was the first study to examine the emotional consequences of giving meaning to otherwise insignificant events, he stated.

Source: PsychCentral
https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/09/02/seeing-gods-hand-in-the-everyday-stokes-happiness-for-religious-folks/138332.html