All posts; Tags Include "Prayer"
- February 5, 2010
- 04:58 PM
- 280 views
Does prayer make you more forgiving... and why?
Widely reported earlier this week was a study on prayer and forgiveness. It's by the same crew that gave us the study last year on prayer and gratitude, and has (broadly speaking) the same methodological concerns (it only recruited students who already pray, and uses measures that are difficult to interpret).But, fair doos, this is an interventional study of the effects of prayer that is basically sound, and the authors deserve kudos for trying to assess this unfashionable area. So what did it s........ Read more »
Lambert, N., Fincham, F., Stillman, T., Graham, S., & Beach, S. (2009) Motivating Change in Relationships: Can Prayer Increase Forgiveness?. Psychological Science, 21(1), 126-132. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609355634
- May 1, 2009
- 03:43 AM
- 614 views
It's official: praying for sick people doesn't help
Every few years, a group based at Hertford College at Oxford puts together a statistical analysis of all the studies conducted to date that have looked at whether praying for sick people helps them get better (or at least stay alive).
The latest has just been published, and it contains something pretty radically new in their conclusions: the evidence is now so clear cut that they think that no more studies should be done. The book is shut. Praying for sick people simply doesn't work.
Now, ........ Read more »
Roberts L, Ahmed I, Hall S, & Davison A. (2009) Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000368.pub3.
- May 1, 2009
- 03:40 AM
- 350 views
It's official: praying for sick people doesn't help
Every few years, a group based at Hertford College at Oxford puts together a statistical analysis of all the studies conducted to date that have looked at whether praying for sick people helps them get better (or at least stay alive).The latest has just been published, and it contains something pretty radically new in their conclusions: the evidence is now so clear cut that they think that no more studies should be done. The book is shut. Praying for sick people simply doesn't work.Now, the odd ........ Read more »
Roberts L, Ahmed I, Hall S, & Davison A. (2009) Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000368.pub3.
- April 19, 2009
- 04:40 PM
- 487 views
The difference betwen God, Santa Claus, and Humpty Dumpty is all in the mind
Here's a new study of brain activity of Christians who were either praying (i.e. a personal prayer), reciting the Lord's Prayer, reciting a nursery rhyme, or making wishes to Santa Claus.What they found was that, unlike the other activities, personal prayer lit up sections of the brain that seem to be connected normal social interactions. It activated so called 'theory of mind' processing.In the graphic shown, they're looking specifically at a region of the brain (the temporo-parietal junction) ........ Read more »
Schjoedt, U., Stodkilde-Jorgensen, H., Geertz, A., & Roepstorff, A. (2009) Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsn050
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