Social basis of the Belief-As-Benefit-Effect

Abstract

Involvement in and commitment to religion/spirituality (R/S) are thought to promote health by building interpersonal bonds through R/S social engagement, a mechanism known as Spirituality as Support Enhancement (SSE). The SSE mechanism implies that R/S social engagements should be associated with health benefits distinct from social engagements in general, but this implication remains untested. The current study has two research questions: 1) Do R/S social engagements contribute to predicting health beyond general social engagements? And 2) Do general social engagements attenuate the relationship between R/S social engagements and health? Using data from the 2020 General Social Survey (N = 22,908), two series of survey-weighted multilevel regression models and simultaneous equation models were performed to address the research questions. The results showed that R/S social engagement measures made minimal contributions to predicting health and were weak predictors of health across all models. Findings have implications for R/S-related healthcare and social policies.