{"id":138,"date":"2008-04-04T16:45:54","date_gmt":"2008-04-04T16:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/spirituality-and-happiness-are.html"},"modified":"2008-04-04T16:45:54","modified_gmt":"2008-04-04T16:45:54","slug":"spirituality-and-happiness-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/spirituality-and-happiness-are.html","title":{"rendered":"Spirituality and happiness: are they connected?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of British Columbia have made a discovery that they found most startling. Mark Holder, professor of psychology at UBC, and his graduate assistant, Judi Wallace, confessed that they were quite surprised when their research revealed that \u201cspirituality\u201d accounted for 6.5 \u2013 16.5 percent of children\u2019s \u201chappiness.\u201d<br \/>\nWhile numerous studies have shown the positive impact of spirituality on adults\u2019 mental and physical well-being, the Canadian researchers expected less impact on children. Dr. Holder said that they found that \u201cit\u2019s a whopping big effect. . . I thought their spirituality would be too immature to account for their well-being.\u201d<br \/>\nAs part of the research, children 9 to 12 were asked to respond to statements such as, \u201cI feel a higher power\u2019s presence\u201d and were asked such questions as \u201chow often do you pray or meditate privately outside of church or other places of worship?\u201d<br \/>\nThe Canadian study found that \u201cspirituality\u201d trumped by a significant measure all other factors such as gender, financial status, or the type of school (public or private, co-ed or single sex, boarding or day) a child attended in generating happiness and contentment in the children studied.<br \/>\nThese results reinforce the findings of the exhaustively documented <em>Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities<\/em> (2003) which found among other things that \u201creligiosity and spirituality significantly influence well-being\u201d and \u201cthe human brain appears to be organized to ask ultimate questions and seek ultimate answers.\u201d In other words, it seems human beings are \u201chardwired\u201d to seek ultimate answers in a power greater than themselves.<br \/>\nCould it be that both of these studies are scientific commentaries on Blaise Pascal\u2019s (1623-1662) philosophical insight nearly four centuries ago, that \u201cThere is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator . . . ?\u201d<br \/>\nI think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of British Columbia have made a discovery that they found most startling. Mark Holder, professor of psychology at UBC, and his graduate assistant, Judi Wallace, confessed that they were quite surprised when their research revealed that \u201cspirituality\u201d accounted for 6.5 \u2013 16.5 percent of children\u2019s \u201chappiness.\u201d While numerous studies have shown&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spirituality and happiness: are they connected? - Casting Stones<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/spirituality-and-happiness-are.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spirituality and happiness: are they connected? - Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Researchers at the University of British Columbia have made a discovery that they found most startling. Mark Holder, professor of psychology at UBC, and his graduate assistant, Judi Wallace, confessed that they were quite surprised when their research revealed that \u201cspirituality\u201d accounted for 6.5 \u2013 16.5 percent of children\u2019s \u201chappiness.\u201d While numerous studies have shown&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/spirituality-and-happiness-are.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-04T16:45:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dr. Richard Land\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Spirituality and happiness: are they connected? - Casting Stones","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/spirituality-and-happiness-are.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Spirituality and happiness: are they connected? - Casting Stones","og_description":"Researchers at the University of British Columbia have made a discovery that they found most startling. 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