Spiritual Practices and Dispositional Optimism in an Underprivileged Population

Alejandro Cid (), Gonzalo Arrieta, María Mercedes Ponce De León and Charles E. Stokes

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Optimism seems to foster the ability to manage adverse situations better - a finding especially relevant for disadvantaged populations. Employing a unique sample from a small underprivileged village, we study the association between spiritual practices and dispositional optimism. The village belongs to a developing country that is, by far, the most secular country in Latin America: this makes particularly interesting exploring the role of spiritual practices in this context. We find that spiritual practices are positively associated with higher optimism, measured by the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R): those who practice spirituality, score, on average, 14.4 percentage points higher on the LOT-R than those who do not. And this association seems to be especially robust in the case of the poor and less educated: those with spiritual practices score 20 percentage points higher on the LOT-R. Thus, the role that spiritual practices may play in dispositional optimism in disadvantaged populations deserves more attention

Keywords: Dispositional optimism; spiritual practices; LOT-R; hope; religion; happiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hap and nep-lam
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Working Paper: Spiritual Practices and Dispositional Optimism in an Underprivileged Population (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:84642

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