Although I I was raised a Catholic, and for most of my adult life I paid little attention to religion. Like many scientists, I have assumed that it is built on opinion, conjecture, or even hope, and is therefore irrelevant to my work. This work runs a psychological lab focused on finding ways to improve the human condition, using the tools of science to develop techniques that can help people cope with the challenges that life poses to them. But in the 20 years since I started this work, I’ve realized that a lot of psychologists and neuroscientists are figuring out how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviors — how to support them when they’re grieving, how to help them be more ethical. how to allow them to find connection and happiness – reflects ideas and techniques that religions have used for thousands of years.
Science and religion are often in conflict. But if we remove theology — views of the nature of God, the creation of the universe, and the like — from the daily practice of religious faith, the hostility in the debate evaporates. What we are left with is a series of rituals, customs and feelings, which in themselves are the result of a kind of experiment. For thousands of years, these experiments, conducted in the cluttered thickness of life, as opposed to sterile laboratories, have led to the design of what we might call spiritual technologies — tools and processes designed to calm, move, persuade, or otherwise pinch the mind. And the study of these technologies has revealed that some parts of religious practices, even when removed from the spiritual context, are able to affect people’s minds in measurable ways that psychologists often look for.
For example, my lab found that having people practice Buddhist meditation for a short time made them better. After just eight weeks of studying with a Buddhist lama, 50 percent of those we randomly chose to meditate daily spontaneously helped a stranger in pain. Only 16% of those who did not meditate did the same. (In fact, the stranger was an actor we hired to use crutches and wear a moving cast as he tried to find a place in a crowded room.) However, compassion was not limited to strangers; also applies to enemies. Another study found that after three weeks of meditation, most people refrained from seeking revenge on someone who offended them, unlike most who did not meditate. After my team noticed these profound influences, we began to look for other connections between our previous research and existing religious rituals.
Gratitude, for example, is something we have studied closely and is a key element of many religious practices. Christians often say grace before eating; The Jews thank God with Fashion Annie prayer every day after waking up. When we studied the action of gratitude, even in a secular context, we found that it made people more virtuous. In a survey in which people could get more money by lying about the results of a coin overturning, the majority (53 percent) cheated. But that number has dropped dramatically for the people we first asked to count their blessings. Only 27% of them chose to lie. We also found that when they feel grateful to man, to destiny, or to God, people become more useful, more generous, and even more patient.
Even very subtle actions – such as moving together in time – can have a significant effect on the mind. We see synchronicity in almost every religion in the world: Buddhists and Hindus often sing together in prayer; Christians and Muslims regularly kneel and stand in unison during worship; Jews often swing, either scarfwhen you recite prayers together. These actions believe in a deep goal: to create a connection. To see how it works, we asked strangers to sit across the table from each other, put on headphones, and then tap a sensor on the table in front of them every time they heard a tone. For some of these couples, the sequence of tones is the same, which means that they would tap each other’s hands in unison. For others, they were random, which means that hand movements will not be synchronized. Then we created a situation in which one member of each pair was stuck, performing a long and difficult task. Not only did those who moved their hands in unison report that they felt more connected and compassionate to their partner, who is now working, 50% of them decided to help their partner – a large increase compared to the 18% who decided help without just moving in sync.
The combined effects of simple elements like these – those that change the way we feel, what we believe in and who we can count on – accumulate over time. And when embedded in religious practices, research shows that they may have some protective properties. Regular participation in religious practices reduces anxiety and depression, increases physical health and even reduces the risk of early death. These benefits do not simply come from general social contact. There is something specific about spiritual practices themselves.