Subjective and objective fit in religious congregations: Implications for well-being

Abstract

For most religiously affiliated people, the context of the religious group is a central element of the religious experience, but it is also one that has been relatively neglected in the study of the impact of religion on well-being. This study used social attraction as a framework to examine the role of individual—group fit in three congregations, with respect to four outcomes with implications for overall well-being. Structural equation modeling of survey data indicated that subjective fit with the congregation’s prototype was associated with greater life satisfaction and better self-reported health. Objective fit with observed congregational norms was associated only with greater life satisfaction. These effects were not mediated by existential certainty or by social support.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 29 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.