ArticleHealth psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association2016
Religious participation predicts diurnal cortisol profiles 10 years later via lower levels of religious struggle.
Article in Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Racial Discrimination, Religious Coping, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Among African American Women and Men.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2025Article
- Spirituality and Cardiovascular Health in the HANDLS Study: Evidence for Within-race Differences.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Article
- Stress Responses Among Individuals with Spiritual Struggles in Hungary: An Experimental Study.Journal of religion and health · 2024Article
- Profiles of cardiometabolic risk and acculturation indicators among South Asians in the US: latent class analysis of the MASALA study.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Article
- The Relationship Between Four Measures of Religiosity and Cross-National Variations in the Burden of Dementia.Cureus · 2021Article
- Religion, spirituality and diurnal rhythms of salivary cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone in postmenopausal women.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Plasma protein expression profiles, cardiovascular disease, and religious struggles among South Asians in the MASALA study.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Mechanisms of Racial Health Disparities: Evidence on Coping and Cortisol from MIDUS II.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2020Article
- Religious Attendance and Biological Risk: A National Longitudinal Study of Older Adults.Journal of religion and health · 2019Article
- Does Religion Predict Health-Promoting Behaviors in Community-Dwelling Elderly People?Journal of religion and health · 2019Article
- Religious Participation and Biological Functioning in Mexico.Journal of aging and health · 2017Article
- Absent Relations of Religious Coping to Telomere Length in African American and White Women and Men.Experimental aging researchArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveMultiple aspects of religion have been linked with a variety of physical health outcomes; however, rarely have investigators attempted to empirically test the mechanisms through which religiosity impacts health. The links between religious participation, religious coping, and diurnal cortisol patterns over a 10-year period in a national sample of adults in the United States were investigated.
methodParticipants included 1,470 respondents from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study who provided reports on religious participation, religious coping, and diurnal cortisol.
resultsReligious participation predicted steeper ("healthier") cortisol slopes at the 10-year follow-up, controlling for potential confounds. Further, religious struggle (religious coping marked by tension and strain about religious and spiritual issues) mediated the prospective association between religious participation and cortisol slope, such that greater religious attendance predicted lower levels of religious struggle 10 years later, which in turn was linked with a steeper cortisol slope; this effect remained strong when controlling for general emotional coping and social support. Positive religious coping was unrelated to diurnal cortisol patterns.
conclusionThese findings identify religious struggle as a mechanism through which religious participation impacts diurnal cortisol levels and suggest that diurnal cortisol is a plausible pathway through which aspects of religion influence long-term physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.