News

Monday August 9, 2010


New Study Finds Thinking about God Reduces Anxiety For Believers

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

TORONTO, August 9, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Thinking about your faith in God may make you less upset about making mistakes, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs,” said Michael Inzlicht, who co-wrote the study with Alexa Tullett, in a University of Toronto statement.

“I think it behooves us as psychologists to study why people have these beliefs; exploring what functions, if any, they may serve.”

Inzlicht said that there is evidence that religious people live longer and tend to be happier and healthier, but added that “although religion is associated with a sense of meaning and order, it remains unclear whether religious belief can actually cause people to feel less anxiety and distress.”

In the study, titled “Reflecting on God, Religious Primes Can Reduce Neurophysiological Response to Errors,” participants first either wrote about religion or did a scrambled word task with religious and God-related words – thereby leading them to think about religious topics.

The researchers then recorded their brain activity, focusing on error-related negativity (ERN) – a neural signal that arises from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and is associated with defensive responses to errors – as the participants completed a computerized task that was chosen because it generated a high rate of errors.

“The results indicate that for believers, conscious and nonconscious religious primes cause a decrease in ERN amplitude. In contrast, priming nonbelievers with religious concepts causes an increase in ERN amplitude,” the researchers reported.

“Overall, examining basic neurophysiological processes reveals the power of religion to act as a buffer against anxious reactions to self-generated, generic errors—but only for individuals who believe.”

The findings of this study concur with previous research that has shown that religious belief benefits everything from longevity to child rearing.

A study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine in 2006, by lead researcher from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Daniel Hall, found that those who attend church services at least once per week live on average two to three years more than those who don’t.

Dr. Hall, who is also an Episcopal minister, suggested in an interview with LiveScience.com that perhaps religion helps to alleviate stress. “Being in a religious community helps you make meaning out of your life,” he said. “There is something about being knit into the type of community that religious communities embody that has a way of mediating a positive health effect,” he added.

A 2007 study authored by John Bartkowski, a sociologist with Mississippi State University, examined the impact of religion on the development of young children.

Bartkowski’s team questioned the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 children, asking the adults to rate the children – most of them age six – on self-control, frequency of poor or unhappy behavior, and their ability to respect and work with peers. The results were compared to the parents’ rate of attendance at church services, how frequently they talked about faith with their child, and whether or not there was arguing over religion in the home.

The children of parents who regularly attended church services and talked with their child about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as showing better behavior, self-control skills and social skills than children from non-religious families. Children whose parents both attended church regularly were rated as having the best behavior and being the most well-adjusted.

An abstract of the study, “Reflecting on God …” with links to the full text, is available here.

See related LSN articles:

Churchgoers Live Longer

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/apr/06040508.html

Children Thrive When Parents Follow Religious Beliefs, Study Shows

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07042506.html

Happily Married Men and Women Have Lower Blood Pressure, Other Health Benefits

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08032504.html

| Send Letter to Editor