Aging, health and disease: the effect of religiosity on the optimism of elderly people

Abstract

In the aging process religiosity has been shown to be associated with important benefits. In this paper we seek to analyse the agency factors of religiosity in optimism and its mediation in satisfaction with life in both healthy and ill elderly people. The sample surveyed by the CROP Questionnaire, consisting of 376 Portuguese elderly people, 238 classified as healthy and 138 as ill, showed that there is a positive relationship between religiosity and optimism only for the group of healthy elderly people. For the ill elderly, optimism was only promoted by satisfaction with life. The distinction between optimism of internality and externality showed that the healthy elderly anchor their optimism in internality beliefs, while the ill elderly base their optimism on external factors. The establishment of a self-regulating system is discussed with beliefs and religious practices as perpetuators. Confrontation with personal frailty, powerlessness, and fear were discussed as predetermining factors to disembedding, as described by Giddens (1991, 1997), while reembedding occurs with the elderly regaining self- -control, as a result of divine factors prone to optimism.