Do religious practices improve one’s mood? Daily religious behaviors are associated with daily wellbeing and buffer against hassles and uplifts

Abstract

Effects of trait religiousness on wellbeing are well-documented, but the potential of daily religious practices to influence daily wellbeing and mitigate the commonplace ups and downs of daily life has rarely been examined. This study explored how trait religiousness and daily religious behaviors relate to day-to-day wellbeing (i.e., positive and negative affect), especially in the context of daily stresses and uplifts. A national US sample of 184 adults completed baseline measures and 14 daily surveys. Multilevel modeling revealed the relevance of daily religious behaviors (rather than trait religiousness) for daily affect. In general, daily religious behaviors showed salutary main effects on daily affect and buffered associations of daily stresses and uplifts on affect. In contrast, trait religiousness showed weak or null main effects and did not buffer associations between stresses/uplifts and affect. Notably, some associations between daily religious behaviors and affect were stronger for individuals higher in trait religiousness. Item-level analyses showed that most religious behaviors had similar associations as composite daily religious behaviors in predicting positive affect, whereas only specific daily religious behaviors predicted negative affect. Findings suggest future research might profitably attend to daily religious behaviors to further understand how religiousness influences emotional wellbeing.