The Franciscan Prayer Elicits Empathic and Cooperative Intentions in Atheists: A Neurocognitive and Phenomenological Enquiry

Abstract

Religiosity influences the alleviation of troubles through cooperative and empathic attitudes, but these involve a sense of community offered in non-religious support groups and healthcare institutions too, where individual's spiritual well-being is based on responsibility and solidarity. This is the case of the Alcoholic Anonymous program adopted by several care initiatives, which use the Franciscan Prayer as a fundamental text representing a western epistemic meaning-making system to provide guidance for cooperation and empathy. We aimed to identify the effect of the Franciscan Prayer on the neurocognitive function and emotional-social experiences in 20 persons declared as atheist (M age = 22.85 ± 2.60 years). Spiritual profiles, acceptance of religion, and dispositional empathy were psychometrically evaluated. Functional images were acquired in a 3 T scanner to identify BOLD signals while reading The Franciscan Prayer, The Lord's Prayer representing a culturally known religious text with no Franciscan elements, and a birthday serenade representing a culturally known non-religious text. Phenomenological interviews were performed to categorize emotional experiences and social situations associated with reading each text. Results show that spiritual well-being and empathic dispositions are not allied with religious beliefs. The reading of The Franciscan Prayer was correlated with activation in primary motor and premotor cortices, parietal primary and integrative areas, and occipital primary and associative cortices. These motor and sensorial functions might be essential for the empathic attitudes expressed in the Franciscan tradition allowing cooperative actions. This is congruent with the participant's experiences of wellness, reciprocity, responsibility, and helping evoked by this prayer. The Lord's Prayer was correlated with activation in prefrontal regions, as well as, in anterior and posterior portions of the cingulate cortex. These activations may imply mnemonic and moral processes that may be needed for conflict valuations based on childhood and cultural memories evoked by the participants. As testimonies indicate, disgust, confusion, or criticisms were associated with the religious property of the text. We conclude that thoughts, emotions, and actions evoked by The Franciscan Prayer are not inclined by its religious quality but by its empathic and cooperative properties, which may allow for self-reflection and social actions needed for support groups. inTrODUcTiOn A number of studies have reported the influence of religiosity on comfort and alleviation when facing physical, mental, or emotional disorders. Particularly, praying and meditation may elicit psychological states that favor the development of attitudes, such as forgiveness and acceptance, which increase perceived well-being and a sense of control over the uncertainty of illness (Koenig, 2009;Vess et al., 2009;Caixeta et al., 2012;Grossoehme et al., 2013;Torges et al., 2013). These so-called spiritual elements are not only related to a belief in...

Moral emotions when reading quotidian circumstances in contexts of violence: an fMRI study

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“…Future studies correlating individual differences on morality and empathy with brain functions in extensive samples should be assessed. Also, phenomenological enquiries and ethnographic records to assess particular cultural contexts and experiences could be performed to relate individual subjectivity with brain function, as previously made in some studies (Mercadillo, Alcauter, et al, 2015; Mercadillo et al, 2017).…”

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Affective and cognitive brain-networks are differently integrated in women and men while experiencing compassion

“…Our results may support this assumption only for the ACC in men for whom it was connected with the IA, the IFG (affective component-associated brain regions), the dmPFC (related to mentalizing), and with other regions related to social and moral cognition, such as the frontal and temporal poles. As previously suggested, that ACC connectivity may allow regulation of empathic expressions (Kunz et al, 2011;Olalde-Mathieu et al, 2022) and its connectivity with the temporal pole may implicate autobiographical processes and the attribution of social qualities in others (Mercadillo et al, 2017). For women, the ACC was only coupled to the precuneus, whose function involves self-awareness related to emotional valuations, episodic memory (Ochsner et al, 2004;Atilano-Barbosa et al, 2022), imagery about another's mental states (Schurz et al, 2014) and moral judgments (Bzdok et al, 2012).…”

Número 18

“…DOI. https://doi.org/10.35600/25008870.2023.18.0295 330 funciones cerebrales que disponen a la empatía y la cooperación, aún en personas ateas, y que estas funciones disponen a la comprensión del otro y la responsabilidad social (Mercadillo et al, 2017). Así lo comprendimos al conocer que las experiencias sanadoras mediante hongos alucinógenos en la región Mazateca de Oaxaca, México, involucran saberes tradicionales profundos que desencadenan experiencias espirituales que pueden ser abiertamente dialogadas con las neurociencias para complementar el conocimiento de lo humano (Fagetti & Mercadillo, 2022).…”