The effects of prayer on attention resource availability and attention bias
Two experiments were used to measure the effects of prayer, contemplation or a control activity on attention resource capacity and attention bias. Results from a dual-task test in Experiment 1 indicated that allowing participants to pray about an issue in their lives improved subsequent task perform...
| Published in: | Religion, brain & behavior |
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| Authors: | ; ; ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge
2017
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| In: |
Religion, brain & behavior
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| Further subjects: | B
Resource Allocation
B Attention B attention bias B Prayer |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Two experiments were used to measure the effects of prayer, contemplation or a control activity on attention resource capacity and attention bias. Results from a dual-task test in Experiment 1 indicated that allowing participants to pray about an issue in their lives improved subsequent task performance, but only for individuals who score highly on a measure of religiosity. Experiment 2 suggested that praying about a problem can bias attention in a word-search task. Similar effects were not observed for control activities. Thus, at least for people most likely to engage in religious behavior, praying about a problem appeared to liberate cognitive resources that are presumably otherwise consumed by worry and rumination, leaving individuals better able to process other information, and additionally to bias attention to favor detection of problem-relevant information. These effects suggest one cognitive process (attention) that may underlie how people come to perceive answers to prayers. |
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| ISSN: | 2153-5981 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion, brain & behavior
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2016.1206612 |