Does Religiosity Promote Psychological Well-being in the Transition to Established Adulthood?

We examined how religiosity changes from emerging to established adulthood, and which religious transition patterns are associated with psychological well-being in the maturation to established adulthood. In addition, we tested the moderating effects of young adults ’ demographic factors (age, gender, race, and income) in the above associations. We applied latent class and latent transition analyses to 301 young adults in Waves 7 (2000; mean age = 23 years; age range = 18–29 years) and 9 (2016; mean age = 39 years; age range = 34–45 ye ars) of the Longitudinal Study of Generations. We identified three religiosity classes among young adults in Waves 7 and 9: strongly religious, liberally religious, and weakly religious. We found that young adults who remained strongly religious between waves reported better psychological well-being at Wave 9 than those who remained liberally religious, remained weakly religious, and changed from strongly to weakly religious. In addition, we found that low-income young adults who remained weakly or liberally religious from emerging to established adulthood reported lower psychological well-bei ng in established adulthood compared to high-income young adults with the same transition pattern. Our findings suggested that being consistently religious during the transition to established adulthood would be beneficial for young adults’ psychological well-being possibly due to cognitive consis tency or social integration th...
Source: Applied Research in Quality of Life - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research