The current study investigated gender effects on the influence of self-reported religiosity and spirituality on cardiovascular and cortisol responses to a laboratory stressor among young adults. Participants with higher composite religiosity/spirituality scores, religiosity, levels of forgiveness and frequency of prayer showed lower cortisol responses. Greater composite religiosity/spirituality...

There is a multitude of instruments for measuring religiosity/spirituality. Many of these questionnaires are used or even were developed in the context of studies about the connection between religiosity/spirituality and health. Thus, it seems crucial to note that measures can focus on quite different components along a hypothetical path between stressors and health. We present an instructive m...

Using two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines two sets of relationships between attitudes, religiosity and first sex among adolescents. First, I estimate the effects of religiosity and attitudes about sex on the likelihood of engaging in first sex. Then, I estimate the effect of having sex on subsequent religiosity and attitudes. The findings are c...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To determine associations between religiosity and female adolescents' sexual and contraceptive behaviors. DESIGN We conducted a secondary analysis on data from a randomized controlled trial comparing interventions designed to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Multivariable modeling assessed the association between a religiosity index consisting of ite...

In the beginning, as a familiar book recalls, the earth was a formless void. And by separating light from dark, water from sky, life from dust, order came forth. Thus appeared organisation and categorisation. This is to say, classification, since to classify is to make for order and clarity. These are the qualities needed today for the study of congenital malformations and eventual control of t...

Persistent population aging worldwide is focusing attention on modifiable factors that can improve later life health. There is evidence that religiosity and spirituality are among such factors. Older people tend to have high rates of involvement in religious and/or spiritual endeavors and it is possible that population aging will be associated with increasing prevalence of religious and spiritu...

a r t i c l e i n f o Three hypotheses with the potential to provide information on the role of religiosity as a promotive and protective factor in early adolescence were tested. Adolescents (N = 166, M age = 13 years, 49% female, 49% European American, 45% African American) and mothers reported their own personal importance of religion and the frequency of their attendance of religious service...

The current investigation examined the interactive effect of dysfunctional dating attitudes and religiosity on substance use in a large sample of youth (N = 1,357) from the YouthStyles survey. Based on past research, we explored the possibility that religiosity buffered the association between dysfunctional dating attitudes and substance use. Because age was significantly associated with all st...

BACKGROUND Medication non-adherence is often a predominant problem in the management of hypertension and other chronic conditions. In explaining health behaviours, social determinants like spirituality and religiosity are increasingly identified to impact health and treatment. Although a number of researchers have found spirituality and religiosity to be primary resources among persons dealing ...

We hypothesized that religiosity, a set of traits variably expressed in the population, is modulated by neuroanatomical variability. We tested this idea by determining whether aspects of religiosity were predicted by variability in regional cortical volume. We performed structural magnetic resonance imaging of the brain in 40 healthy adult participants who reported different degrees and pattern...