The emotional toll of hell: cross-national and experimental evidence for the negative well-being effects of hell beliefs.
rct · Level II
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 24465514.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0085251 and PMC identifier 3899000.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Though beliefs in Heaven and Hell are related, they are associated with different personality characteristics and social phenomena. Here we present three studies measuring Heaven and Hell beliefs' associations with and impact on subjective well-being. We find that a belief in Heaven is consistently associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction while a belief in Hell is associated with lower happiness and life satisfaction at the national (Study 1) and individual (Study 2) level. An experimental priming study (Study 3) suggests that these differences are mainly driven by the negative emotional impact of Hell beliefs. Possible cultural evolutionary explanations for the persistence of such a distressing religious concept are discussed.
Medical subject headings
- Culture
- Emotions
- Personal Satisfaction
- Religion