Religion helps people to face life crises easily with emotion-regulation strategies that psychologists also use to treat stress, anxiety and depression, finds a study by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Religious people look for positive ways of thinking about hardship, a practice known to psychologists as "cognitive reappraisal." They also tend to have confidence in their ability to cope with difficulty, a trait called "coping self-efficacy," says the study that found them effectively reducing the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The new findings are published in the Journal of Religion and Health.

"It appears that religious people are making use of some of the same tools that psychologists have systematically identified as effective in increasing well-being and protecting against distress," said Florin Dolcos, a professor of psychology in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who led the study with psychology professor Sanda Dolcos and graduate student Kelly Hohl.

religion and psychology
Psychology professors Sanda Dolcos, left, and Florin Dolcos led a study of religiosity and emotion-regulation strategies among healthy adults /L. Brian Stauffer

The new study suggests that science and religion are on the same page when it comes to coping with hardship. The research was prompted in part by earlier studies demonstrating that people who are religious tend to use a coping strategy that closely resembles cognitive reappraisal.

"For example, when somebody dies, a religious person may say, 'OK, now they are with God,' while someone who isn't religious may say, 'Well, at least they are not suffering anymore,'" Florin Dolcos said. In both cases, the individual finds comfort in framing the situation in a more positive light.

To determine if religious people rely on – and benefit from – reappraisal as an emotion-regulation strategy, the researchers recruited 203 participants with no clinical diagnoses of depression or anxiety. Fifty-seven of the study subjects also answered questions about their level of religiosity or spirituality.

Study Findings

The researchers asked participants to select from a series of options describing their attitudes and practices. They asked them about their coping styles, whether they try to find comfort in their religious or spiritual beliefs. "We asked them how often they reappraise negative situations to find a more positive way of framing them or whether they suppress their emotions," said Hohl.

Deepika Padukone breaks down talking about depression
Deepika Padukone breaks down talking about her struggle with depression.YouTube screenshot

The researchers also evaluated participants' confidence in their ability to cope and asked them questions designed to measure their symptoms of depression and anxiety. Hohl said she looked for correlations between coping strategies, religious or nonreligious attitudes and practices, and levels of distress. She also conducted a mediation analysis to determine which practices specifically influenced outcomes like depression or anxiety.

Mediation analysis

"If we are just looking at the relationship between religious coping and lower anxiety, we don't know exactly which strategy is facilitating this positive outcome," Sanda Dolcos said. "The mediation analysis helps us determine whether religious people are using reappraisal as an effective way of lessening their distress."

The analysis also shows whether an individual's confidence in their ability to handle crises – another factor that psychological studies have found is associated with less depression and anxiety – "facilitates the protecting role of religious coping against such symptoms of emotional distress," Sanda Dolcos said. "We found that if people are using religious coping, then they also have decreased anxiety or depressive symptoms."

Cognitive reappraisal and coping self-efficacy were contributing to those decreased symptoms of distress, she said. The study should be of interest to clinical psychologists working with religious clients, Hohl said.