People of religious faith may have experienced lower levels of unhappiness and stress than secular people during the UK’s Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, according to a new University of Cambridge study released today as a working paper.
The findings follow recently published Cambridge-led research suggesting that worsening mental health after experiencing Covid infection – either personally or in those close to you – was also somewhat ameliorated by religious belief. This study looked at the US population during early 2021.
The Faculty of Economics Professor Sriya Iyer and Prof Shaun Larcom from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy argue that – taken together – these studies show that religion may act as a bulwark against increased distress and reduced wellbeing during times of crisis, such as a global public health emergency.
“Religious beliefs may be used by some as psychological resources that can shore up self-esteem and add coping skills, combined with practices that provide social support,” said Professor Iyer, from Cambridge’s Faculty of Economics.
“Selection biases make the wellbeing effects of religion difficult to study,” said Prof Shaun Larcom from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy, and co-author of the latest study. “People may become religious due to family backgrounds, innate traits, or to cope with existing health struggles.”
“The Covid-19 pandemic provided a natural experiment in which the whole of society was hit with a negative shock to wellbeing at the same time, and we wanted to try and measure whether religion affected how some people dealt with it.”
Larcom and his Cambridge colleagues Prof Sriya Iyer and Dr Po-Wen She analysed survey data collected from 3,884 people in the UK during the four years prior to the pandemic, and the fifteen months after Covid struck, which encompassed the first two national lockdowns.
They found that while lockdowns were associated with a universal uptick in unhappiness, the average increase in feeling miserable was 29% lower for people who described themselves as belonging to a religion.*
The researchers also analysed the data by “religiosity”: the extent of an individual’s commitment to religious beliefs, and how central it is to their life. Those for whom religion makes “some or a great difference” in their lives experienced around half the increase in unhappiness seen in those for whom religion makes little or no difference.**
“The study suggests that it is not just being religious, but the intensity of religiosity that is important when coping with a crisis,” said Larcom.
Those self-identifying as religious in the UK are more likely to have certain characteristics, such as being older and female. The research team “controlled” for these statistically to try and isolate the effects caused by faith alone, and still found an average of 20% difference in unhappiness levels between religious and non-religious people.
There was little overall difference between Christians, Muslims and Hindus – followers of the three biggest religions in the UK. However, the team did find that wellbeing among some religious groups appeared to suffer more than others when places of worship were closed during the first lockdown.
“The denial of weekly communal attendance appears to have been particularly affecting for Catholics and Muslims,” said Larcom.
For the earlier study, authored by Professor Sriya Iyer along with colleagues Kishen Shastry, Girish Bahal and Anand Shrivastava from Australia and India, researchers used online surveys to investigate Covid-19 infections among respondents or their immediate family and friends, as well as religious beliefs, and mental health.
The study was conducted during February and March 2021, and involved 5,178 people right across the United States, with findings published in the journal European Economic Review in November 2023.
Researchers found that almost half those who reported a Covid-19 infection either in themselves or their immediate social network experienced an associated reduction in wellbeing.
Where mental health declined, it was around 60% worse on average for the non-religious compared to people of faith with typical levels of “religiosity”.***
Interestingly, the positive effects of religion were not found in areas with strictest lockdowns, suggesting access to places of worship might be even more important in a US context. The study also found significant uptake of online religious services, and a 40% lower association between Covid-19 and mental health for those who used them.
“The pandemic presented an opportunity to glean further evidence of this in both the United Kingdom and the United States, two nations characterised by enormous religious diversity.”
Added Larcom: “These studies show a relationship between religion and lower levels of distress during a global crisis. It may be that religious faith creates resilience by allowing people to feel part of something much larger and older, which helps them to weather tumultuous times.”
Do Religious People Cope Better in a Crisis? Evidence from the UK Pandemic Lockdowns, Iyer, S., Larcom, S., She, P-W., 2024, Cambridge Working Papers in Economics
