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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1567701
This article is part of the Research TopicSpirituality and Religion: Implications for Mental HealthView all 49 articles
Close social relationships and happiness in the United States: The moderating role of love by God
Provisionally accepted- University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, United States
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In the contemporary United States, many individuals suffer from a lack of close relationships, negatively affecting their happiness. At the same time, many individuals do not feel a loving relationship with God/Spirit (i.e., religious love). In the 1950s, theorist Pitirim Sorokin posited that love, particularly religious love, acts as a transformative energy capable of fostering resilience in the modern rational world, and scholars hypothesized a link between religious love and happiness. However, the topic remains understudied. This study analyzes United States data from the Global Flourishing Study and presents results from linear regression with robust standard errors. The findings indicate that a central component of religious love, love by God, mitigates the adverse effects of lacking close relationships. This study calls on researchers to further investigate the significant yet understudied role of religious love in individuals' lives.
Keywords: love, happiness, Close relationship, god, happiness & well-being
Received: 17 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Moller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Stephanie Moller, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.