Investigating the Effect of Religion’s Dimensions on Egoistic Suicide Ideation

Abstract

The complexity of suicide as a social phenomenon has long been discussed in the literature. Scholars have always used religion to show how a social force can shape most individualistic behaviors like egoistic suicide. However, religion is not a simple unidimensional fact that can be applied to any kind of suicidal thought or behavior. The main premise of the present study is that religion consists of different aspects each of which can have different impacts on individuals’ attitudes toward suicide. Operationalizing religion as a multidimensional construct this study simultaneously tested the independent effects of four dimensions of religion (religiosity, spirituality, afterlife beliefs, and religious affiliation) on attitudes toward egoistic suicide. Using data from the 2018 General Social Survey (GSS) the present study proposes running a logistic regression analysis to see if suicide attitudes are significantly influenced by religiosity, spirituality, afterlife beliefs, and religious affiliation.