| By Cand.mag. Jens Pedersen Post Conference Ressources Poster – download here Article – download here (Danish) and here (English) |
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Abstract
Religions are said to bring meaning into an otherwise chaotic world. The purpose of this study is to evaluate that meaning-making capacity on an empirical basis. To do so statistical data is drawn from the international study program, World Values Survey (WVS), especially data concerning the Nordic countries.
By testing and analyzing correlations between a number of variables, I try to answer the following three questions: 1) Is meaning-making a religious ‘speciality’? 2) If so, do people actually get a meaning in life through religion? 3) And does it mean something to their general perception of life? There is a strong, negative correlation between feeling that life is meaningless and feeling happy.
Hence, if religions do bring meaning to the life of believers, religious people might be happier. That is in fact the finding of this study. Also I found, that religious people think much more about the meaning and purpose of life, and they are less prone to feelings of meaninglessness, independently of how happy they are. It seems that they are better at making meaning of life.
In sum meaning-making seems indeed to be a religious speciality with a significant effect on people’s perception of life.