a hypothesis
Mormonism highly values intrinsic religiosity (belief in teachings and certain truth claims), but implicitly and explicitly demands that it be displayed extrinsically (near perfect attendance, service in volunteer positions, public, physical and vocal displays of belief and conformity). In part due to these pressures, an unknown percent of members regularly attend services, despite their non-belief, for extrinsic reasons, such as social conformity and family relations. These “faithful non-believers” are most often “in the closet” about their true feelings and beliefs, and this may cause stress, cognitive dissonance, and may result in negative mental health outcomes, particularly with regard to depression.
Simply looking at attendance would not be enough to tease out possible risk factors for mental health outcomes. For example, some people attend because they agree with the teachings and it brings them happiness. Others, however, attend for mostly extrinsic reasons, such as social support and friendship. Yet others attend only to avoid ostracism, or even divorce.
I would hypothesis that that Mormons who attend church, but do not believe the teachings and truth claims, have worse mental health outcomes than those who attend as believers. In other words, those who demonstrate extrinsic religiosity while masking their lack of intrinsic religiosity, have worse outcomes than those who attend for both extrinsic and intrinsic reasons.
Just a thought.
6 comments:
This is quite possible, and ought to be easily tested. If I recall correctly, someone has examined the idea of extrinsic religious orientation being associated with lower health outcomes, but I don't have any of my books handy. One important thing to remember is that there are two types of extrinsics-- social extrinsics, like those you are describing, and personal extrinsics, who use religion as a way to feel relief from distress. (Gorsuch & McPherson, Kirkpatrick, and Pargament have written about distinguishing the two types of extrinsic orientation.) It might be that both types of extrinsic orientation are associated with poor health outcomes, but for somewhat different reasons.
I don't think I have any data sets with both religious orientation and mental health, but I'll check once life slows down. It is the end of the semester, with lots of exams to grade and other things to take care of. I really ought to be grading or sleeping now, but instead am surfing the net to relax. I'm glad I came upon your blog post.
One thing you might do is check the General Social Survey site. I believe that they included some religious orientation items in some panels of the survey. If you got lucky, they might include some mental health measures in those years as well. Google "general social survey" and you'll see it.
Your hypothesis could probably be extended to more faiths than just Mormons. Southern Baptists have a strong onus to attend and to be very involved, and many do for much the same reason you describe. The Jews in Israel even have a term for those that are considered Jews but are not really religious: secular Jews. A term others use is "Social" Christians, meaning they go for the programs and the social atmosphere but don't worry about whether they believe or not. The mental health problem with those groups would likely exhibit in similar fashion in groups that promote the need to be strong adherents to the faith, and I think you might well find similar statistics to those you see in Utah regarding depression if you examined other religious groups for such things. Islam, I'm fairly sure, has similar problems with depressed women, and you can see why when you recall your experience in a mosque.
The main difference is most likely that a lot of churches have a fairly open policy and don't expect a lot from attenders, so the pressure is not there. In the Mormon Church, there is definitely a pressure to be involved and active, and people who do it without believing will definitely have some inner turmoil. The hypothesis does not need to be limited to Mormonism, though.
michael nielsen- It is, indeed, testable. I am currently in the process of gathering what I can find on Mormonism and mental health, especially depression. I have only seen one study so far that delved into the different types of extrinsic religiosity. It found that Protestant women in the sample had higher extrinsic-social scores than Mormon women (in NM). (Williams, M. 1993. Correlates of Beck Depression Inventory Scores in Mormon and Protestant women: Religious orientation, traditional family attitudes and perfectionism. Dissertation. Brigham Young University)
I have also heard that extrinsic oriented people would have worse mental health outcomes, but I've also seen contradictions to that. I think it makes intuitive sense that people who are extrinsic-social in churches where that's acceptable would not have worse outcomes. I would guess, though, that there are differences between e-s people who genuinely like the fellowship and don't really care about doctrine much (social Mormons/Christians), and those e-s people who disagree with the doctrine and/or only go to keep their marriage intact, etc (NOMs, etc).
I agree with anon that this problem is not unique to Mormons, and could extend to any conservative religion, especially ones that have a majority status wherever they are.
Anon, when you point to Secular Jews do you realize they make-up the majority of Jews today? Also keep in mind there is a vast difference in Judaism between Judaism in Israel as compared to the U.S. Not only that but secular Jews still consider themselves Jewish, while most ex-mormons such as myself do not consider themselves Mormon anymore. Whether or not they officially remove their names, why take the time or upset the relative peace at home with believing spouses or family members?
I think one big reason for that is that there is no formal "leadership" in Judaism as there is with Mormonism.
When I worked on the studies at The Why, we always referred to Public vs Private religiosity, and the general finding was the Private religiosity was correlated with Public, and with slightly better mental health outcomes. Public only was not.
I was not paying very good attention at the time though. ;-) What I do remember about all of this is thinking in my oversimplified way that, the general social research finding of "external locus of control is less mentally healthy," is also true for religious people...who, IMO, are more likely to have an external locus of control.
AZ,
I realized I had not responded to this question, and felt the need to respond today (much later) for some reason.
Yes, I realize most Jews are "secular Jews." I found it interesting that Jews, and I suppose Muslims, accept their religion is more of an ethnicity/culture than it is just a religion. I found it interesting mostly because 1) almost no Christians think of themselves that way, and yet so many are "cultural Christians.", and 2) I knew a guy in high school with no appreciation for the social sciences who would fight tooth and nail that Jews were not a culture because they were a religion. It was almost as if he worried he'd accept that Christians could be in it only for the secular/social aspects and not the faith.
Anyway, just didn't mean to leave that question unanswered. As for the ex-Mormons who dont' consider themselves Mormons, I wasn't referring to them in my comments. I was referring to people who consider themselves Mormons but are only "social" Mormons. They do the activities and such but don't believe in it.
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