IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intell/v101y2023ics0160289623000776.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Religiosity does not prevent cognitive declines: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Dürlinger, Florian
  • Fries, Jonathan
  • Yanagida, Takuya
  • Pietschnig, Jakob

Abstract

Over the past hundred years, a plethora of studies on intelligence and religiosity associations predominantly yielded evidence for a meaningful negative relation between these two variables. However, effect strengths varied substantially between primary studies and it has been suggested that religiosity and intelligence associations change as people age, because religiosity may play a protective role for cognitive abilities in elderly individuals. Consequently, it has been suggested that negative intelligence and religiosity associations may decline in strength or even reverse signs as people age. Therefore, we examine here cross-sectional associations of self-reported religious behaviors and several measures of cognitive function (numeracy, verbal fluency, memory and a proxy of psychometric g) as well as their cross-temporal changes in respondents from 11 European countries and Israel aged 50+ years (N = 30,424) in three waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). As expected, cognitive function scores were meaningfully negatively related to praying whilst associations with participation in religious services were trivial. Cross-lagged panel analyses yielded consistently negative, albeit small, effects of both intelligence on praying and of praying on intelligence. Multilevel random-intercept regressions showed tentative evidence for faster cognitive declines in more religious people for numeracy and g, but not for verbal fluency and memory. No conclusive evidence for a moderation by societal values of religiosity could be found. In all, our evidence shows a negative, non-trivial association between intelligence and religiosity in elderly participants which remains longitudinally robust. These findings corroborate the generality of the small negative intelligence and religiosity association.

Suggested Citation

  • Dürlinger, Florian & Fries, Jonathan & Yanagida, Takuya & Pietschnig, Jakob, 2023. "Religiosity does not prevent cognitive declines: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:intell:v:101:y:2023:i:c:s0160289623000776
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2023.101796
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000776
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.intell.2023.101796?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. María-Victoria Zunzunegui & Beatriz E. Alvarado & Teodoro Del Ser & Angel Otero, 2003. "Social Networks, Social Integration, and Social Engagement Determine Cognitive Decline in Community-Dwelling Spanish Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 58(2), pages 93-100.
    2. Peter H. Van Ness & Stanislav V. Kasl, 2003. "Religion and Cognitive Dysfunction in an Elderly Cohort," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 58(1), pages 21-29.
    3. Bates, Douglas & Mächler, Martin & Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steve, 2015. "Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 67(i01).
    4. Florian Dürlinger & Jakob Pietschnig, 2022. "Meta-analyzing intelligence and religiosity associations: Evidence from the multiverse," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-28, February.
    5. Rachel S. Newson & Eva B. Kemps, 2005. "General Lifestyle Activities as a Predictor of Current Cognition and Cognitive Change in Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Examination," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 60(3), pages 113-120.
    6. Yeager, D.M. & Glei, Dana A. & Au, Melanie & Lin, Hui-Sheng & Sloan, Richard P. & Weinstein, Maxine, 2006. "Religious involvement and health outcomes among older persons in Taiwan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(8), pages 2228-2241, October.
    7. Gordon Pennycook & Robert M Ross & Derek J Koehler & Jonathan A Fugelsang, 2016. "Atheists and Agnostics Are More Reflective than Religious Believers: Four Empirical Studies and a Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-18, April.
    8. Das, Aniruddha, 2022. "Religious attendance and global cognitive function: A fixed-effects cross-lagged panel modeling study of older U.S. adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    9. Reindl Benjamins, Maureen & Brown, Carolyn, 2004. "Religion and preventative health care utilization among the elderly," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 109-118, January.
    10. Terrence D. Hill & Amy M. Burdette & Jacqueline L. Angel & Ronald J. Angel, 2006. "Religious Attendance and Cognitive Functioning Among Older Mexican Americans," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 61(1), pages 3-9.
    11. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Das, Aniruddha, 2022. "Religious attendance and global cognitive function: A fixed-effects cross-lagged panel modeling study of older U.S. adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    2. Joanna Orr & Mark Ward & Rose Anne Kenny & Christine Ann McGarrigle, 2021. "Mini-mental state examination trajectories after age 50 by religious affiliation and practice in Ireland," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 565-574, December.
    3. Brandts, Jordi & Busom, Isabel & Lopez-Mayan, Cristina & Panadés, Judith, 2022. "Dispelling misconceptions about economics," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    4. Jastrzębski, Jan & Chuderski, Adam, 2022. "Analytic thinking outruns fluid reasoning in explaining rejection of pseudoscience, paranormal, and conspiracist beliefs," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    5. Katherine Carroll Britt & Kathy C. Richards & Gayle Acton & Jill Hamilton & Kavita Radhakrishnan, 2023. "Association of Religious Service Attendance and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms, Cognitive Function, and Sleep Disturbances in All-Cause Dementia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-13, February.
    6. Luis Aranda & Martin Siyaranamual, 2014. "Are Smarter People Better Samaritans? Effect of Cognitive Abilities on Pro-Social Behaviors," Working Papers 2014:06, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    7. repec:cup:judgdm:v:13:y:2018:i:1:p:23-32 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Tobia Spampatti & Ulf J. J. Hahnel & Evelina Trutnevyte & Tobias Brosch, 2024. "Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 8(2), pages 380-398, February.
    9. Barnabas Szaszi & Bence Palfi & Aba Szollosi & Pascal J. Kieslich & Balazs Aczel, 2018. "Thinking dynamics and individual differences: Mouse-tracking analysis of the denominator neglect task," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(1), pages 23-32, January.
    10. Insoo Cho & Peter F. Orazem, 2021. "How endogenous risk preferences and sample selection affect analysis of firm survival," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1309-1332, April.
    11. David J. Cooper & Krista Saral & Marie Claire Villeval, 2021. "Why Join a Team?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 6980-6997, November.
    12. Zakaria Babutsidze & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2019. "Digital Communication and Swift Trust," Post-Print halshs-02409314, HAL.
    13. JANSSENS, Jochen & DE CORTE, Annelies & SÖRENSEN, Kenneth, 2016. "Water distribution network design optimisation with respect to reliability," Working Papers 2016007, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    14. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    15. Chavez, Daniel E. & Palma, Marco A. & Nayga, Rodolfo M. & Mjelde, James W., 2020. "Product availability in discrete choice experiments with private goods," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    16. Raymond Hernandez & Elizabeth A. Pyatak & Cheryl L. P. Vigen & Haomiao Jin & Stefan Schneider & Donna Spruijt-Metz & Shawn C. Roll, 2021. "Understanding Worker Well-Being Relative to High-Workload and Recovery Activities across a Whole Day: Pilot Testing an Ecological Momentary Assessment Technique," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(19), pages 1-17, October.
    17. Prokudina, Elena & Renneboog, Luc & Tobler, Philippe, 2015. "Does Confidence Predict Out-of-Domain Effort?," Discussion Paper 2015-055, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    18. Elisabeth Beckmann & Lukas Olbrich & Joseph Sakshaug, 2024. "Multivariate assessment of interviewer-related errors in a cross-national economic survey (Lukas Olbrich, Elisabeth Beckmann, Joseph W. Sakshaug)," Working Papers 253, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    19. Noussair, C.N. & Tucker, S. & Xu, Yilong, 2014. "A Future Market Reduces Bubbles but Allows Greater Profit for More Sophisticated Traders," Other publications TiSEM 43ded173-9eee-48a4-8a15-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    20. Valentina Krenz & Arjen Alink & Tobias Sommer & Benno Roozendaal & Lars Schwabe, 2023. "Time-dependent memory transformation in hippocampus and neocortex is semantic in nature," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-17, December.
    21. Morán-Ordóñez, Alejandra & Ameztegui, Aitor & De Cáceres, Miquel & de-Miguel, Sergio & Lefèvre, François & Brotons, Lluís & Coll, Lluís, 2020. "Future trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services in Mediterranean forests under global change scenarios," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:intell:v:101:y:2023:i:c:s0160289623000776. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/intelligence .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.