Does Religiosity Really Enhance Our Well-Being?

Abstract

The concepts of Religiosity and Well-being are positively correlated, as many researches have shown. However, this relation is quite complex when we observe it in the real world. The World Happiness Report, which is published every year by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Networks, ranks the Nordic countries to be the happiest ones. Surprisingly, these are also the nations which have a very high population of atheists. Thus, the nature of the relationship between the two variables becomes somewhat unclear. This review paper attempts to presents a brief overview of the evolution of researches in the field of well-being and attempts to provide an explanation as to why this contradiction between the research findings and real-world situation exists.