Spiritual practices and dispositional optimism in an underprivileged population

Arrieta, Gonzalo; Cid, Alejandro; Ponce de León, María Mercedes

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URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12806/1361

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Autor/es

Arrieta, Gonzalo ; Cid, Alejandro ; Ponce de León, María Mercedes

Editor

Universidad de Montevideo, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economía, Departamento de Economía

Fecha

2017

Extensión

21 p.

Resumen

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.