CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 151Religion, Spirituality, and PsychologyWorkplace Spirituality and LeadershipHealth, psychology, and well-being

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 129 of the 129 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

‘Does Religion Cause Health?’: Differing Interpretations and Diverse Meanings

Oman, Doug, Thoresen, Carl E.·2002·Journal of Health Psychology
DOI 10.1177/1359105302007004326
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The question, ‘Does religion (or spirituality) cause physical health benefits?’ may be given at least four diverging interpretations in terms of causal path diagrams. In common usage, the question may be interpreted to indicate that religion causally influences health by: (1) any mechanism, including well-established factors such as social support and improved health behaviors; (2) additional mechanisms, such as enhanced positive psychological states (e.g. faith, hope, inner peace) acting through psychoneuroimmunologic or psychoneuroendocrinologic pathways; (3) offering psychological strength for acquiring or maintaining positive health behaviors; or (4) causally influencing health by distant healing or intercessory prayer. We review historical confusion between these interpretations, arguing that disentangling them is important for collaborative health care, promotion and research.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/1359105302007004326

Cites

129 of 129 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 16

  1. Barnard, D., 1995, Academic Medicine, 70, 806
  2. 10.1375/twin.2.2.115 · DOI
  3. Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group, 1999, Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research
  4. Flinders, T., 1994, The RISE response: Illness, wellness, and spirituality
  5. Frank, J., 1975, Johns Hopkins Medical Journal, 137, 127
  6. Galton, F., 1872, Fortnightly Review, 18, 125
  7. Gould, S. J., 1999, Skeptical Inquirer, 23, 55
  8. Kurtz, P., 1999, Skeptical Inquirer, 23, 24
  9. Melnechuk, T., 1985, Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 2, 22
  10. Oman, D., Complementary Health Practice Review
  11. Poloma, M. M., 1991, Varieties of prayer, 85
  12. Powell, L. H., American Psychologist
  13. Sicher, F., 1998, Western Journal of Medicine, 169, 356
  14. Targ, E., 1997, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 3, 74
  15. Thomson, K. S., 1996, American Scientist, 84, 532
  16. Tuggle, M. B., 2000, It is well with my soul: Churches and institutions collaborating for public health

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 151

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Oman, D., & Thoresen, C. E.
Affiliations
  • University of California, Berkeley (US)
  • Stanford University (US)
Corresponding author
Oman, Doug
ORCID
Oman, Doug
Venue
Journal of Health Psychology
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2002-07
Volume
7
Issue
4
Pages
365-380
ISSN
  • 1359-1053 (ISSN-L)
  • 1461-7277
DOI
10.1177/1359105302007004326
OpenAlex
W2059500951
Cited by
151
References
128
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 8
FWCI
4.26
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Health Psychology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Workplace Spirituality and Leadership
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health, psychology, and well-being
Keywords
religion and health, spirituality, causal pathways, social support, health behavior, positive psychological states, psychoneuroimmunology, psychoneuroendocrinology, intercessory prayer, distant healing, faith and hope, collaborative care

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review