Religious affect and personal happiness: a replication among Sunni students in Malaysia

Abstract

Building on earlier studies conducted in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic contexts, this study tests the hypothesis that higher levels of positive religious affect are associated with higher levels of personal happiness among a sample of 189 Sunni Muslim students studying at the International Islamic University in Malaysia; participants completed the Sahin-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Islam, the Oxford Happiness Inventory, and the short-form Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. The data reported a small but statistically significant association between religiosity and happiness after taking sex and individual differences in personality into account.