This book is a great tool for understanding why some people are religious and some not. It looks at things like socializaion, personality, benefits and costs of beliefs to mental health and happiness, and many more. The book is filled with statistics to back up the findings. Also included is much analysis of what portions of the population believe and what they believe in. All of the authors findings are not his alone but more a summary of what the study of the psychology of religion has come to find.

The bad part of this book is when the author tries to draw conclusions from the findings. He is constantly trying to be even-handed and never to say that the findings could ever be used to question the validity of religion. He even tries to give the views of those opposed to religion based on psychology and then show why they are wrong. When he does this, he give pathetic imcomplete explanations, uses terrible logic, and completely misrepresents these views he is trying to explain away. I recommend you read the book and skip the intro and conclusion.

As a researcher in the field of economic psychology, I am impressed by Furnham and Argyle's depth of knowledge in this area. Most of the research reported in this book is European in perspective, but the European's have always outpaced American economists and psychologists in this field. I am especially pleased to report that the authors have become aware that we poor American scholoars do exist and personally, I am estatic that they cite several of the research articles that I have written in the last five years. Those interested in the cross cultural study of money in this age of a global economy should read this book very closely to discover the differences and similarities in the human mind when it comes to thoughts about money. It is my hope that this book has many readers and that it creates more practical and academic perspsectives on the study of the mind and money around the world.