Religion Replenishes Self-Control

Abstract

Researchers have proposed that the emergence of religion was a cultural adaptation necessary for promoting self-control. Self-control, in turn, may serve as a psychological pillar supporting a myriad of adaptive psychological and behavioral tendencies. If this proposal is true, then subtle reminders of religious concepts should result in higher levels of self-control. In a series of four experiments, we consistently found that when religious themes were made implicitly salient, people exercised greater self-control, which, in turn, augmented their ability to make decisions in a number of behavioral domains that are theoretically relevant to both major religions and humans' evolutionary success. Furthermore, when self-control resources were minimized, making it difficult for people to exercise restraint on future unrelated self-control tasks, we found that implicit reminders of religious concepts refueled people's ability to exercise self-control. Moreover, compared with morality- or death-related concepts, religion had a unique influence on self-control.

Personal prayer counteracts self-control depletion

“…The interaction between thought suppression and prayer remained significant when controlling for religiosity (F(1, 56) = 4.32, p = .042, g p 2 = .072) and when treating religiosity as a z-standardized continuous predictor in a multiple regression analysis, the two-way interaction between thought suppression and prayer remained marginally significant (t(53) = À1.94, p = .058) while the three-way interaction with religiosity was not significant (t(53) = À1.14, p = .260). These results are in line with previous research (Bremner et al, 2011;Friese & Wänke, 2014;Lambert, Fincham, Stillman, Graham, & Beach, 2010;Rounding et al, 2012). However, due to the small sample size it is not possible to confidently rule out a possible moderation by religiosity.…”

“…In the present study, religiosity did not affect the results, in line with previous related research (Bremner et al, 2011;Rounding et al, 2012). It is interesting to note though that although almost 80% of participants indicated being religiously affiliated, religion did not seem to be very important in their lives.…”

“…This finding emerged on the Stroop task as the dependent variable, a task that is devoid of religious associations and moral norms of ''right'' and ''wrong''. It fits well with recent evidence that primes of God-related concepts outside of conscious awareness can foster self-control after depletion (Rounding et al, 2012), and brief periods of personal prayer can improve resistance against the urge to retaliate against a person who has been insulting shortly before (Bremner et al, 2011). It further suggest that a brief episode of personal prayer may not only prevent depletion effects from unfolding (Friese & Wänke, 2014), but also thwart against them once they have occurred.…”

“…Praying counteracted this effect of impaired self-control after provocation. Consistent with the research by Rounding et al (2012), neither religiosity nor religious affiliation affected the results in any study.…”

“…First, Rounding, Lee, Jacobson, and Ji (2012) provided support for the assumption that religious primes such as God, spirit, or divine foster self-control. In one study (Study 3), individuals depleted of self-control resources, but primed with religious concepts outside of conscious awareness, persisted longer on an unsolvable puzzles task than depleted participants who were primed with neutral concepts.…”