Religion is a category of social institutions, including worldviews, texts, beliefs, rituals, and cultural practices that are most often based on a belief in a god or a group of supernatural beings.

The term religion is derived from the Latin religio (respect for what is sacred) and religare (to bind, in the sense of an obligation). It describes the ways people believe and practice their relationship with that which they determine to be holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine or worthy of special reverence.

In most traditions, religion is the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. These concerns include questions about the origin of the universe, the afterlife, moral worthiness at death, and a sense of the enduring power of a god or other spirit.

This power may be called by a wide variety of names: ghosts, spirits, gods, deities, the ultimate cause, or some other objective factor. What is essential is the conscious recognition of this objective factor and a feeling of dependence upon it.

These feelings are then reflected in a desire to be in right or personally advantageous relations to that which is objectively conceived, and by the resultant activity of worship, sacrifice, fasting, prayer, propitiation, and so on.

For thousands of years, people have turned to religion to answer questions about their place in the world, how to be happy, and what makes a good life. And now, behavioral scientists have learned some important lessons from this longstanding relationship between religion and well-being.