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Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 51, No. 4, March 2003 (°

C 2003)

The Relationship Between Religion and Happiness

Among German Students
Leslie J. Francis,1,4 Hans-Georg Ziebertz,2 and Christopher Alan Lewis3

A sample of 331 students completed German editions of the Oxford Happiness

Inventory and the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity, together with
the short form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. These data provide
no evidence for a relationship between religiosity and happiness among German
students, contrary to the conclusions of recent studies that have employed the same
indices in the UK and in the USA.
KEY WORDS: religion; happiness; Oxford Happiness Inventory; personality; Eysenck.

INTRODUCTION

Happiness is an elusive concept of considerable interest to philosophers

(McFall, 1989) as well as to psychologists (Argyle, 1987). Elusive concepts do
not, however, form the basis for good empirical research. Empirical research into
the psychological correlates of happiness is dependent on a rigorous theoretical
discussion of the nature of happiness and an adequate operationalization of that
discussion. Considerable progress has been made, both in refining the psychologi-
cal construct of happiness and in measuring that construct through the development
of the Oxford Happiness Inventory by Argyle, Martin, and Crossland (1989).

1 The Revd. Professor Leslie J. Francis is Director of the Welsh National Centre for Religious Education
and Professor of Practical Theology, University of Wales, Bangor, UK.
2 Professor Dr. Hans-Georg Ziebertz is Professor of Practical Theology, University of Würzburg,
Germany.
3 Dr. Christopher Alan Lewis is Lecturer in Psychology, University of Ulster at Magee College, Northern
Ireland.
4 Address correspondence to Leslie J. Francis, Welsh National Centre for Religious Education,
University of Wales, Bangor Normal Site, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2PX, Wales, UK; e-mail:
L.J.Francis@Bangor.ac.uk.

273

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C 2003 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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274 Francis, Ziebertz, and Lewis

From a theoretical perspective, Argyle and Crossland (1987) suggest that hap-
piness comprises three components: the frequency and degree of positive affect or
joy; the average level of satisfaction over a period; and the absence of negative feel-
ings, such as depression and anxiety. Working from this definition, they developed
the Oxford Happiness Inventory by reversing the 21 items of the Beck Depres-
sion Inventory (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Hock, & Erbaugh, 1961) and adding 11
further items to cover aspects of subjective well-being not so far included. Three
items were subsequently dropped, leading to a 29-item scale. The test constructors
report an internal reliability of 0.90 and a seven-week test-retest reliability of 0.78.
Validity was established against happiness ratings by friends and by correlations
with measures of positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction.
A series of studies employing the Oxford Happiness Inventory in a range of
different ways has confirmed the basic reliability and validity of the instrument
and begun to map the correlates of this operational definition of happiness. For
example, several studies have demonstrated the relationship between happiness and
stable extraversion (Argyle & Lu, 1990a; Brebner, Donaldson, Kirby, & Ward,
1995; Francis, 1999; Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998; Furnham &
Brewin, 1990; Furnham & Cheng, 1999; Lu & Argyle, 1991). Other studies have
demonstrated the positive relationship between happiness and social competence
(Argyle & Lu, 1990b), self-esteem, social skills and cooperativeness (Lu & Argyle,
1991), satisfaction with relationships with people from whom support had been
received (Lu & Argyle, 1992), coping styles (Rim, 1993), locus of control (Noor,
1993), engagement in a serious leisure activity (Lu & Argyle, 1994), intensity
of musical experience (Hills & Argyle, 1998a), participation in sports (Hills &
Argyle, 1998b), self actualisation, self esteem, likelihood of affiliation, community
feeling and self acceptance (Chan & Joseph, 2000), life regard, self esteem, life
satisfaction and affiliative tendency (Hills & Argyle, 2001) and satisfaction with
life, self esteem, sociability, and self-rated attractiveness (Neto, 2001). Lu and
Argyle (1993) found an inverse relationship between happiness and the total time
spent watching television. In a longitudinal study conducted among 36 adults
between the ages of 17 and 61 years over a period of six weeks, Valiant (1993)
found that happiness was more stable than depression. While depressive mood
was significantly related to negative events and to a negative evaluation of these
events, happiness was independent of life events and of the cognitive evaluation
of these events.
From a theological perspective, there is much within the Christian tradition
to link religion and happiness. In the Old Testament, Psalm1 proclaims:

Happy are those who reject the advice of evil men. Instead they find joy in obeying the Law
of the Lord.

According to Psalm 128:

Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.
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Relationship Between Religion and Happiness 275

Similarly, the Book of Proverbs proclaims:

Happy are these who keep my ways;

and
Happy are those who trust in the Lord.

In the New Testament, the words attributed to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount
proclaim:
Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them
fully.

According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus exclaims:

How happy are those who hear the word of God and obey it!

In the Letter to the Romans, Paul writes:

How happy are those whose wrongs God has forgiven, whose sins he has covered over!

Critics of the Christian tradition, however, may suggest that religion detracts
from happiness, by emphasising the individual’s unworthiness, and sinfulness, or
by drawing attention to the awesomeness of human mortality. For example, Psalm
51 laments:
Against you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight so that you are justified
in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgement. Indeed I was born guilty, a sinner
when my mother conceived me.

A series of recent studies has begun to test the validity of these two competing
claims regarding the relationship between religion and happiness by examining the
empirical relationship between scores recorded on the Oxford Happiness Inventory
and scores recorded on the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (Francis,
Lewis, Philipchalk, Brown, & Lester, 1995) among different populations. In view
of the fact that individual differences in personality are known to be related both to
scores on the Oxford Happiness Inventory (Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk,
1998) and to scores on the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (Francis,
Lewis, Brown, Philipchalk, & Lester, 1995), this series of recent studies has also
included the short form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck,
Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985).
The first study, reported by Robbins and Francis (1996), was conducted among
360 undergraduates in the UK. The second study, reported by Francis and Lester
(1997), replicated the original study in a different cultural context among 212 un-
dergraduates in the USA. The third study, reported by French and Joseph (1999),
was conducted among 101 undergraduate students in the University of Essex. The
fourth study, reported by Francis, Jones, and Wilcox (2000), employed three sepa-
rate samples drawn from the UK: 994 secondary school pupils during the final year
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276 Francis, Ziebertz, and Lewis

of compulsory schooling attending four state-maintained secondary schools in the

north east of England, 456 first-year undergraduate students attending one institu-
tion in Wales, and 496 members of a branch of the University of the Third Age in the
south of England, a relatively informal education network for senior citizens. The
fifth study, reported by Francis and Robbins (2000), was conducted among 295 par-
ticipants attending a variety of workshops and courses on the psychology of reli-
gion, ranging in age from late teens to late seventies. All six samples demonstrated a
significant positive correlation between happiness and attitude toward Christianity,
after controlling for the possible contaminating influence of personality.
A related study, reported by Francis and Katz (2002) administered the Hebrew
translation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory together with the Katz-Francis Scale
of Attitude toward Judaism to a sample of 298 Hebrew-speaking undergraduate
students in Israel. After taking into account individual differences in personality,
these data demonstrate a significant positive correlation between religiosity and
happiness.
Argyle and Hills (2000) administered the Oxford Happiness Inventory to-
gether with a three-factor index of religious affect to a sample of 364 residents
of Oxfordshire between the ages of 18 and 83 years. This study reported a posi-
tive correlation between happiness and the immanent factor of religious affect but
no correlation between happiness and either the social factor of religiosity or the
transcendent factor of religiosity.
Against this background the aim of the present study is to explore whether
the same pattern of relationships exists among personality, religion, and happiness
among students in Germany.

METHOD

Sample

A sample of 311 students attending the University of Würzburg completed

a short questionnaire. Three-fifths (62%) of the respondents were female, and
two-fifths (38%) were male; 6% were under the age of twenty, 90% were in
their twenties, 3% were in their thirties, and 1% were aged forty or over. Nearly
three-fifths (57%) of the respondents were Roman Catholic, 30% were Lutherans,
6% belonged to other religious groups, and 7% owned no religious affiliation.

Measures

The Oxford Happiness Inventory (Argyle, Martin, & Crossland, 1989) is a

29-item multiple choice instrument. Each item contains four options, constructed
to reflect incremental steps defined as: unhappy or mildly depressed, a low level
of happiness, a high level of happiness, and mania. The respondents are asked to
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Relationship Between Religion and Happiness 277

“pick out the one statement in each group which best describes the way you have
been feeling over the past week, including today.” Information on the internal
consistency, reliability, and construct validity of the German translation of the
instrument is provided by Lewis, Francis, and Ziebertz (2002).
The Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (Francis & Stubbs, 1987) is
a 24-item Likert-type instrument, concerned with affective response toward God,
Jesus, bible, prayer and church. Each item is rated on a five-point scale ranging
from agree strongly, through agree, not certain and disagree, to disagree strongly,
which has been shown to function reliably and validly in Britain, Ireland, the USA,
Canada and Australia (Francis, 1992; Francis, Lewis, Philipchalk, Brown & Lester,
1995; Maltby, 1994). Information on the psychometric properties of the German
translation of this instrument is provided by Francis and Kwiran (1999).
The Short Form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck,
Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985) is a 48-item instrument, employing a dichotomous scale
(yes and no) and producing four 12-item indices of extraversion, neuroticism, psy-
choticism, and a lie scale. The instrument has been shown to function reliably
and validly in England, the USA, Canada, and Australia (Francis, Philipchalk, &
Brown, 1991). Information on the psychometric properties of the German transla-
tion of this instrument are provided by Francis, Ziebertz, and Lewis (2003).

Data Analysis

The data were analyzed by means of the SPSS statistical package (SPSS Inc.,
1988), using the frequency, correlation, and regression routines.

RESULTS

Table 1 presents the internal reliability coefficients (Cronbach, 1951) for the
Oxford Happiness Inventory and the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity,
together with the mean scale scores for males and females separately. These statis-
tics demonstrate the high internal reliability of both instruments. In line with a
number of other studies, no significant sex differences were found in mean scores

Table 1. Reliability Coefficients and Mean Scale Scores

Male Female
Scale α M SD M SD t p<

Oxford Happiness Inventory 0.8594 41.6 10.8 43.1 10.2 1.2 ns

Attitude Toward Christianity 0.9642 78.0 24.4 81.8 22.2 1.5 ns
Extraversion 0.8523 7.4 3.3 7.9 3.2 1.4 ns
Neuroticism 0.8104 5.1 3.1 6.1 3.2 2.9 .01
Psychoticism 0.4181 2.7 1.8 2.6 1.5 0.4 ns
Lie scale 0.6379 3.8 2.2 4.0 2.3 0.8 ns
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278 Francis, Ziebertz, and Lewis

Table 2. Correlations with Happiness

Variables r p<

Extraversion +0.4588 .001

Neuroticism −0.4615 .001
Psychoticism −0.0545 ns
Lie scale +0.1887 .001
Attitude Toward Christianity +0.1296 .025

on the Oxford Happiness Inventory (Argyle & Lu, 1990a; Furnham & Brewin,
1990; Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998; Lu & Argyle, 1991, 1992,
1993).
Table 1 also presents the internal reliability coefficients for the extraversion,
neuroticism, psychoticism, and lie scales of the short form Revised Eysenck Per-
sonality Questionnaire, together with the mean scale scores for males and females
separately. These statistics demonstrate that all four scales achieve an acceptable
level of internal consistency. The lower alpha coefficient for the psychoticism scale
is consistent with the known difficulties in measuring this dimension of person-
ality (Francis, Philipchalk & Brown, 1991). In line with general expectation, the
females recorded higher neuroticism scores than the males (Eysenck & Eysenck,
1975).
Table 2 presents the Pearson correlation coefficients between scores on the
Oxford Happiness Inventory and scores of attitude toward Christianity, extraver-
sion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and the lie scale. In line with previous studies,
scores on the Oxford Happiness Inventory were found to be positively corre-
lated with extraversion, negatively correlated with neuroticism, and independent
of psychoticism (Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998). Also in line with
previous studies, the data demonstrated a significant positive correlation between
scores on the Oxford Happiness Inventory and scores on the scale of attitude toward
Christianity.
Table 3 presents the multiple regression significance tests designed to explore
the relationship between attitude toward Christianity and happiness after taking

Table 3. Multiple Regression Significance Tests

Increase
Predictor Variables r2 r2 F p< B t p<

Sex 0.0062 0.0062 1.6 ns +0.1048 +2.1 .05

Extraversion 0.2235 0.2173 73.9 .001 +0.3656 +7.1 .001
Neuroticism 0.3571 0.1337 54.7 .001 −0.3598 −6.8 .001
Psychoticism 0.3595 0.0023 1.0 ns +0.0168 −0.3 ns
Lie scale 0.3740 0.0145 6.0 .01 +0.1219 +2.4 .05
Attitude toward 0.3791 0.0051 2.1 ns +0.0728 +1.5 ns
Christianity
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Relationship Between Religion and Happiness 279

into account the influence of sex, extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and

the lie scale. These statistics demonstrate that the significant positive relationship
between attitude toward Christianity and happiness suggested by the correlation
matrix disappeared after controlling for personality.

CONCLUSION

The findings from the present study are inconsistent with the findings from
the three studies reported by Robbins and Francis (1996), Francis and Lester
(1997) and French and Joseph (1999) employing the same indices of happiness
and religiosity among undergraduate students in Wales, the USA, and England,
with the findings from the three samples reported by Francis, Jones, and Wilcox
(2000) employing the same indices of happiness and religiosity among adolescents,
young adults and adults in later life in the UK and with the findings of Francis and
Robbins (2000) employing the same indices of happiness and religiosity among a
sample of adults in the UK.
Further studies employing the Oxford Happiness Inventory alongside indices
of religiosity are now needed in Germany to explore whether religiosity and hap-
piness are indeed unrelated in this country and not positively correlated as they
appear to be in the UK and in the USA. In view of the well-established pat-
tern of relationships between personality and happiness and between personality
and religiosity, new studies concerned with the relationship between religiosity
and happiness should continue to take individual differences in personality into
account.

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