The RelationshIp between helping behaviors, religiosity and lIfe satisfaction. A case study on Turkish Muslims

Last two decades, various studies have been carried out to exam-ine virtues and their relations to religiosity and positive health appearances such as happiness, wellbeing and life satisfaction. The emerging of positive psychology has cultivated the spreading of studies on the relationship between variables mentioned above. This paper investigates the relationship between helping behav-iors, religiosity and life satisfaction on the case of Turkish Muslim sample. A total 230 participants were recruited from different dis-tricts of Istanbul (Turkey) using non-random snowball sampling techniques in December 2016. Among the participants sampled, 47% (N=108) are men and 53% (N=122) women. Ages of partici-pants range between 15 and 70 and mean age is 28.5 (SD=10.8). In the current study, “Brief Islamic Religiosity Scale” and “Em-pathic Inclination Measure”, “Helping Behaviors Scale” and “Scale for Satisfaction with Life” are applied to the sample. According to regression findings, religiosity has a positive effect on ‘help-ing behaviors' and ‘life satisfaction'. Findings also indicated that empathy and religiosity are mediating factor on the relationship between helping and life satisfaction. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.