Prone to wellness? Dispositional awe, religion/spirituality, and well-being among academic scientists

Abstract

Recent scholarship has identified a growing mental health crisis among scientists and those in academia more generally. This study draws from nationally representative survey data collected from physicists and biologists working in four countries—the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and Italy (N = 3442)—and examines how religion/spirituality relates to their physical and mental well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential mediating role of dispositional awe, which involves transcendent experience. In the current age, science and religion are generally perceived to be in conflict, but recent evidence suggests they might be more complementary than was previously thought, especially in that they both evoke aesthetic experiences. Results from our regression and mediation analyses suggest that academic scientists who rated religion/spirituality as “very important” in their lives had higher overall flourishing scores, lower psychological distress, and were less likely to report that their mental and physical health had worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings present a strong and consistent case for the explanatory role of a sense of awe in these associations. Taken together, our research invites academic and scientific institutions to recognize and value the personal and spiritual dimensions that scientists may bring to their work.