The latest wacko psychological study of religion finds that religious practice builds self-control. Brain-scan studies have shown that when people pray or meditate, there’s a lot of activity in two parts of the brain that are important for self-regulation and control of attention and emotion, Michael McCullough of Miami University told the New York Times' John Tierney. (The cute pic's from the same article.) The rituals that religions have been encouraging for thousands of years seem to be a kind of anaerobic workout for self-control. Fair enough; that sounds plausible, even (especially) when compared with "spirituality":In one personality study, strongly religious people were compared with people who subscribed to more general spiritual notions, like the idea that their lives were “directed by a spiritual force greater than any human being” or that they felt “a spiritual connection to other people.” The religious people scored relatively high in conscientiousness and self-control, whereas the spiritual people tended to score relatively low.
“Thinking about the oneness of humanity and the unity of nature doesn’t seem to be related to self-control,” Dr. McCullough said. “The self-control effect seems to come from being engaged in religious institutions and behaviors.”
But it's convincing only until you read about the kinds of experiments supposed to have confirmed the results, experiments like this one:In a study published by the University of Maryland in 2003, students who were subliminally exposed to religious words (like God, prayer or bible) were slower to recognize words associated with temptations (like drugs or premarital sex). Conversely, when they were primed with the temptation words, they were quicker to recognize the religious words.
I probably lack the discipline to think hard about what self-control is, but I'm pretty sure it's what happens after you're tempted, not the speed with which you are tempted. And doesn't this result also claim to show that people more quickly tempted by bad stuff are also quicker then to register "religious" prompts - what's that about? (If not a typo, it's a much more interesting pseudo-result!) Besides, what could subliminal priming with words show about the neurological consequences of involvement in religious practices in the first place?
I'm sorry: I can't help laughing at this nonsense. Tierney wonders glibly if atheists should take up some sort of religious practice to get more self-control. I'd suggest refraining from reading psychology journals.
