ABSTRACT The often touted positive association between religion and wellbeing is mainly based on evidence from cross-sectional studies. This is problematic because such studies tend to draw conclusions at the individual level despite reporting associations at the group level. In addition to this fallacy, inferences at the group level are also likely to be inflated by the social desirability effect, which may further exacerbate misrepresentations of the individual level. To avoid these pitfalls, we examined prayer-wellbeing (P-WB) associations and social desirability effects at both levels, using single-level and multilevel regression analysis on a longitudinal dataset. Weekly reports of prayer and wellbeing from 282 frequently praying Danish Christians, totaling 4254 complete responses, were combined with a comprehensive background questionnaire featuring a social desirability measure targeting the religious domain. A typical weak positive P-WB association was observed at the group level, which disappeared when controlling for social desirability. At the individual level, the average association across individuals was positive after controlling for social desirability. This overall relationship, however, conceals considerable individual variance with almost a fourth of the estimated individual P-WB associations going in the negative direction, emphasizing the need to be cautious when extrapolating group-level data to the individual level. These findings suggest that cross-sectional studies may oversimplify the P-WB relationship, especially, if the social desirability effect is ignored.

中文翻译：

---

超越社会期望：个人祈祷幸福协会的纵向证据

摘要 经常吹捧的宗教与幸福之间的正相关主要基于横断面研究的证据。这是有问题的，因为这些研究往往会在个人层面得出结论，尽管在群体层面上报告了关联。除了这种谬误之外，群体层面的推论也可能被社会期望效应夸大，这可能会进一步加剧个人层面的错误陈述。为了避免这些陷阱，我们在纵向数据集上使用单级和多级回归分析，检查了两个级别的祈祷幸福 (P-WB) 关联和社会期望效应。来自 282 名经常祈祷的丹麦基督徒的每周祈祷和幸福报告，共有 4254 份完整回复，结合了以宗教领域为目标的社会需求量度的综合背景调查问卷。在群体层面观察到典型的弱正 P-WB 关联，当控制社会意愿时，这种关联消失了。在个体层面，控制社会意愿后，个体间的平均关联是正的。然而，这种整体关系掩盖了相当大的个体差异，几乎四分之一的估计个体 P-WB 关联朝负方向发展，强调在将组级数据外推到个体级别时需要谨慎。这些发现表明，横断面研究可能会过度简化 P-WB 关系，尤其是在忽略社会期望效应的情况下。