Prayer Calms Anger, Aggressive Behavior, Study Shows

You've probably received negative feedback about yourself or your work that has made you angry at some time in your life. While feeling angry is normal, it is also important to have some good, effective anger management techniques you can utilize when you need them. A series of recently published studies indicate prayer reduces feelings of anger and aggressive behaviors, no matter what your religious affiliation.

The studies were conducted by Dr. Brad Bushman, a social psychologist, Ryan Brenner, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Sander Koole from VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A total of three different studies made up this series of experiments on prayer and emotions.

In the first study, the researchers told 53 college students in the United States they would be participating in a series of experiments. The students completed a survey measuring their levels of vigor, anger, tension, depression, and fatigue. Next, they wrote an essay about a situation that made them very angry. The researchers told participants that their essays would be given to a partner they would never meet for evaluation. In actuality, however, there was no partner. Instead, all participants received the same negative anger-inducing feedback about their essays, which included the statement, "This is one of the worst essays I have ever read!"

After having read the evaluation, the researchers had the participants take part in another, "study." Each participant was shown a newspaper story about a college student named Maureen who suffers from a rare form of cancer. Then, they were asked to think about how the cancer affects Maureen's life and how she feels about it. Each student was randomly assigned to either think about Maureen for five minutes or to pray for her for five minutes. Finally, students' levels of anger, tension, vigor, depression, and fatigue were measured again.

All the participants were angrier after they were provoked with the negative feedback, as the researchers had expected. However, those who had prayed for Maureen reported feeling significantly less angry than those who had only thought about her. Thinking about or praying for Maureen had no effect on any of the other emotions measured in this study.

The researchers asserted they did not ask the participants about the specific content of their thoughts or prayers because they didn't want the students to become suspicious about the nature of the study. However, they noted that they ran several pilot studies in which they asked participants about the content of their prayers or thoughts. Participants who prayed in these studies reported praying about the target person's well-being. Students who thought about the target in the pilot studies reported they tended to have sympathetic thoughts, feeling sad about the situation, and compassion for the individual who was suffering.

The second study had a similar setup to the first one. However, only half of the participants wrote an essay about a situation that made them angry. These students then received negative, anger-inducing feedback from someone they thought was their partner in the study. The other half of students wrote essays about neutral topics and received positive evaluations from their, "partner."

Next, the students were instructed to think about or pray for their "partner" for five minutes. The researchers told participants that this was for a study on how individuals form first impressions about others and that thinking about or praying for their "partner" would help them organize the information they had already gathered about their "partner" in order to form a more valid impression.

The students then completed a reaction-time task with their, "partner." If the participants won the task, they were given a chance to blast noise at their, "partner," through headphones. They were able to determine how long and how loud the noise would be as well.

The researchers discovered that those students who had been provoked with the negative, anger-inducing evaluations acted more aggressively toward their "partners," but only if they had only been asked to think about them. The participants who had prayed did not act any more aggressively than others - even if they had been provoked by the negative evaluations.

For the two studies described above, the participants were not required to be Christian, even though most of the students who participated were. Those who participated in the third study, however, were required to be Christian because the Netherlands has a large population of atheists.

The third study was conducted at a Dutch University. The setup for the study was similar to the first two experiments. Half of the students were provoked while the other half were not and then they were asked to think about or pray for someone they personally knew who could use a little extra support or help.

Finally, they were asked to rate the likelihood of 10 different life events. Half of the events were described as being caused by another person. For example, you miss an important airplane flight due to a careless cab driver. The researchers asserted that individuals who are angry would think these types of events are more likely. The other half of events were described as being caused by situational factors. For instance, you miss an important airplane flight due to a flat tire.

The researchers discovered individuals who were provoked and told to think about another person were more likely to think life events caused by others were more likely to happen than those who were not provoked. Those who prayed were not more likely to think events caused by others were more likely to happen, however - regardless of whether they had been provoked or not.

All three studies support the benefits and effectiveness of prayer on anger and aggression. Bushman said, "The effects we found in these experiments were quite large, which suggests that prayer may really be an effective way to calm anger and aggression." Bushman also noted that these results would only apply to typical benevolent prayers, which are encouraged by most religions. He asserts that hateful or vengeful prayers may actually fuel one's feelings of anger and aggressive behaviors.

Given the results of these studies, perhaps the next time you feel angry, you could try spending a few minutes praying for someone else. You may feel less angry after you've spent a few minutes in prayer.

If you would like to read more about these studies, you may check out the on-line journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. These results will also be published in the print version of the journal in a future edition.

Source:

Psych Central: For Anger Management, Say a Prayer:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/03/22/for-anger-management-say-a-prayer/24555.html