Thou shalt not grow a beard

Psychologists in America have interviewed ten male members of the Latter-day Saints Church (i.e. Mormons) who've grown beards despite their church preferring members not to have facial hair. Michael Nielsen and Daryl White argue the stories these men tell provide rich material for exploring issues of social control and individual identity.

In the early years of the LDS church, it was actually common for leaders to wear beards. However, since 1951 when the clean-shaven David McKay became president, the church has urged its members not to wear facial hair, and in some situations (e.g. formal voluntary work in its temples) facial fair is forbidden. Today, the church leadership consider being clean shaven to be associated with purity and devotedness. Moreover, since 1969, Brigham Young University - owned by the LDS church - has formally forbidden its students and staff from having beards (see image on right, taken from the University's webpages, via Wikipedia).

One of the men, Alan, doesn't rule out ever shaving his beard, but says he would have to check with God first: "I'd have to spend some 'knee time' to find out if that's what I was supposed to do. Cause my own heart tells me that ain't so, that I don't need to do that."

Another man, Frank, explains that his beard is central to his identity. "It's me! It's me! I would not be me if I shaved my beard off."

Although he'd worn a mustache for ten years, another interviewee, David, agreed to shave when offered a senior position in the church. "I'd probably still have a mustache," he said. "I might still have it, but I decided not to create any friction with the leaders here."

The researchers say these cases show men attempting to manage "contradictory senses of self".

"Faced with unnecessarily invasive requests to shave, requests that sometimes took the shape of ultimatums, some men expressed resentment at having to choose between a mere show of compliance and deeply felt, even intimate identities: discomfort, embarrassment, and shame are exchanged for a token show of obedience, with resentment likely to follow."
_________________________________

Michael Nielsen, Daryl White (2008). Men's grooming in the Latter-day Saints Church: A qualitative study of norm violation Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 11 (8), 807-825 DOI: 10.1080/13674670802087286

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

How parasites spread religion

Several theories have been proposed for why religions and religious beliefs have evolved, but before now none of them have involved parasites.

Previous theories have suggested that religions help enforce group cooperation. Another suggestion is that religious thoughts and practices are a side-effect of mental abilities that have evolved for other purposes. For example, prayer is a small step from our evolved ability to rehearse what we plan to say to someone who isn't physically with us right now.

Crucially, none of these accounts can readily explain why the diversity of religions varies so much around the world. Brazil, for example, has 159 religions compared with Canada's 15, even though both countries are of comparable size.

Now Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill have tested the idea that religious diversity is a side-effect of the fragmentation of cultures that tends to occur in the face of increased threat from infectious disease.

Fincher and Thornhill used the World Christian Encyclopedia and the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network to compare the spread of infections and religions across 219 countries. Their results were clear: in regions with a greater variety of infectious parasites, the diversity of religions also tends to be greater. This association held strong even after exploring the impact of other potential factors, such as differences in democratisation and histories of colonisation.

The researchers say the association between religion and parasites occurs because reducing contact with outsiders can help protect against disease. In turn, when cultures fragment and groups avoid making contact with each other, more religions are likely to spring up.

"Although religion apparently is for establishing a social marker of group alliance and allegiance, at the most fundamental level, it may be for the avoidance and management of infectious disease," Fincher and Thornhill said. The pair also believe that the diversity of languages and parasites tends to co-vary across the globe for similar reasons.
_________________________________

Corey L. Fincher, Randy Thornhill (2008). Assortative sociality, limited dispersal, infectious disease and the genesis of the global pattern of religion diversity Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275 (1651), 2587-2594 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.0688

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

A nation of shoppers who feel empty inside...

Bloggingheads.tv have filmed another illuminating psychology-related discussion (see player below), this time featuring moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt and libertarian political analyst Will Wilkinson.



Haidt believes that our moral response to a situation is akin to an aesthetic reaction - it happens in the blink of an eye, and it's only after the gut reaction that we attempt to rationalise our feelings.

Underlying our moral responses are five foundations, which are calibrated at different levels depending on our cultural background. The first two, Harm/Care and and Fairness/Reciprocity, are universal, tend to correlate with each other, and are especially valued by liberals. The remaining three also tend to correlate with each other, but are less universal, tending to be valued more by conservative types. These are Ingroup loyalty, Authority/Respect and Purity/Sanctity.

Haidt is not a moral absolutist: he doesn't think there is some external moral truth that existed before man, and will exist afterwards. Neither is he a moral rationalist: he doesn't think reason is the epitome of morality. This usually leaves only relativism - the idea that any given moral code is as good as the next, but Haidt isn't that either. Instead, he says there is a fourth way. There is a moral truth that emerges out of cultural and social circumstances, in the same way that the value of gold is not an inherent property of the metal, but emerges from market processes. Haidt says that appreciating this can help us to be more tolerant and understanding of other cultures.

Today it is morally right that men and women are perceived as equal, he says as an example, but go back in history and there were legitimate reasons driven by a need to divide labour that led the sexes to be viewed unequally, because that was what was seen to work best in that time.

For a successful society, Haidt believes, you need a balance between the five moral foundations - a blend of the liberal and conservative sensibilities. The danger with liberals, he says, is that they would likely choose to set the Authority, Ingroup, and Purity levels to zero, because they associate these values with racism and segregation. And yet, it is order, tradition, and a sense of community and belonging which Haidt believes makes people happy. Without these and you end up with a "nation of shoppers who feel empty inside".

Haidt's discussant Will Wilkinson, himself a libertarian, isn't convinced: "I think meaning is overrated," he says.

There's plenty more in the clip above, including why religion is correlated with happiness within nations, and yet the world's happiest nations are secular. Great stuff Blogginheads.tv - Keep it up!
-

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Want to know more about this area?
Link to recent Prospect magazine article on the emerging moral psychology (open access).
Link to Jonathan Haidt's landmark paper on the new synthesis in moral psychology (open access).

Watching death

Susan Blackmore: "What happens when we die? Surely everyone wonders about this very human question, and it’s certainly caused much dissent between religion and science. While most scientists think that death must be the end of personal consciousness, most religious believers expect their soul or spirit to survive.

How can we find out the truth?

We know that roughly ten per cent of people who come close to death have “near-death experiences” (NDEs) in which they seem to travel down a dark tunnel towards a bright, warm light; see their body from above; experience vivid memories; and even enter another world or meet gods, angels or spirits. A few have mystical experiences of oneness with the universe, or experience the dissolution of the illusory self.

All these experiences can be accounted for, in principle, by disorganised activity in the dying brain. Yet this argument does not convince believers who argue that after all the brain activity stops, the soul or spirit still carries on.

Then there are claims that NDEers have observed details of the accident scene, hospital ward, or medical apparatus that they could not have seen with their physical eyes because they were unconscious at the time. These claims depend critically on timing, with believers saying the experiences happen during unconsciousness or clinical death, while sceptics argue they occur just before or afterwards. But without any means of timing the experiences this cannot be tested.

Some experimenters have placed concealed targets in cardiac care units, hoping that patients close to death may be able to see them, so proving they have really left their body, but no positive results have been obtained. This is what the sceptics would expect but is no proof that they are right.

So the impasse remains.

The most important experiment that’s never been done is to take fMRI or PET scans of people as they die; either those who really do go on to die, or those who suffer clinical death but are resuscitated. If this were done we would be able to test theories about how NDEs and mystical experiences are generated in the dying brain, and answer questions about the timing of the experiences. Perhaps even this would not resolve the final question once and for all, but it would certainly bring us a lot closer to knowing what happens when we die.

And why has it not been done? Because when someone is dying it is far more important to try to save their life than to do a scientific experiment. Nevertheless it could be done, and I hope that one day the technology will be so unobtrusive and easy to use that the ethical problem will disappear and we will be able to watch the dying brain as easily as we can now watch the living brain.

I think it would help us face death with more equanimity."
--

Dr Susan Blackmore is a freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. (Photo credit: Jolyon Troscianko).

Return to menu for 'Most important psych experiment never done.'

Do children understand God's mind before they understand other people's?

If you use a torch to show a three-year-old child that there is a red brick inside a dark box, they will mistakenly assume that everyone else, even without looking, also knows there is a red brick in the box. It's only when they reach the age of about five that they realise other people need to see or be told about the brick to know that it is in there.

That same three-year-old will (appropriately, from a theological perspective) also assert that God knows there is a red brick in the box. Together with other observations, this has led some researchers to conclude that children start out with an understanding of what a god-like, all-knowing perspective is like, and that for several years they mistakenly apply this to other people.

But now Greek psychologists Nikos Makris and Dimitris Pnevmatikos have challenged this idea. They presented 120 Christian children aged between 3 and 7 years with a box that had something rattling around inside it, which they weren't able to reach or see (7 children were earlier excluded because they didn't know who God was). All the age groups correctly stated that another person wouldn't know what was in the box either. In the case of the younger kids, this is simply because they were again assuming that other people's perspective is the same as their own. Crucially, however, only children from about the age of five and up said that God would know what was in the box.

This turns everything on its head. Rather than having an understanding of a god-like perspective which they apply to everyone, the finding suggests three and four-year-olds have an inability to represent the perspective of other people, which in certain contexts, gives the false impression that they understand the idea of an all-knowing god-like mind. Actually, this study shows it's only when they get older, as they begin to understand the perspective of other people, that they also start to truly understand the idea of a supernatural, all-knowing mind.
_________________________________

Makris, N. & Pnevmatikos, D. (2007). Children's understanding of human and supernatural mind. Cognitive Development, 22, 365-375.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Can God make people more aggressive?

Reading violent scripture that's been taken out of context can increase people's aggressiveness, especially when God is said to sanction violence, a new study suggests.

Brad Bushman and colleagues presented hundreds of students with an obscure, violent passage from the Book of Judges in the Old Testament. It tells the story of an Israelite man plotting revenge on a murderous mob from Gibeah, eventually leading to the deaths of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

Crucially, half the students read a version of the passage that included the Israelite man and his associates praying 'before the LORD', together with the sentence: 'The LORD commanded Israel to take arms against their brothers and chasten them before the LORD'. The remaining students read the exact same story but excluding these two sentences that mentioned God.

Next, the students donned headphones and played a reaction time game with a hidden 'partner'. They were told the loser of each round would be blasted with noise over the headphones, and that they had to choose prior to each round how much noise they wanted their 'partner' to be blasted with (on a scale of 0-10 from no noise up to 105 db). This was the measure of aggression.

Overall, the most aggression was shown by those students who read the bible passage that included God sanctioning violence, and furthermore, among that group, it was those who said they believed in God and the Bible who were most aggressive.

“Even among our participants who were not religiously devout, exposure to God-sanctioned violence increased subsequent aggression” the researchers said. “To the extent that religious extremists engage in prolonged, selective reading of the scriptures, focusing on violent retribution toward unbelievers instead of the overall message of acceptance and understanding, one might expect to see increased brutality”.
___________________________________

Evans, G.W. & Wener, R.E. (2007). When God sanctions killing. Effects of scriptural violence on aggression. Psychological Science, 18, 204-207.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

The God ingredient

Meditation can reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure and improve mental health, thus relieving the harmful effects of stress. But does it matter whether the meditation is spiritual in nature or not? A study by Amy Wachholtz and Kenneth Pargament at Bowling Green State University suggests it does. They trained 25 student participants in spiritual meditation and 21 participants in secular meditation. The two groups received identical training except that the spiritual group were instructed to concentrate on a phrase such as “God is joy”, or “God is love” whereas the secular group were instructed to concentrate on a phrase such as “I am content” or “I am joyful”. Before the training, participants in the two groups did not differ on demographics or spirituality. A control group of 22 participants were taught to relax and to avoid stressful thoughts. All participants were then asked to practise their technique for 20 minutes a day for two weeks.

After two weeks, the spiritual meditation group reported lower anxiety, more positive mood, and greater spirituality than the secular meditation and control groups. Moreover, the spiritual group participants were able to withstand holding their hand in icy water (a measure of pain tolerance) for twice as long as the other participants. “The current study suggested that spiritual therapeutic techniques may be more effective than secular techniques”, the authors said.

"...the spiritual group participants were able to withstand holding their hand in icy water for twice as long as the other participants"

Elizabeth Valentine at Royal Holloway, University of London told New Scientist magazine the finding could be explained by a placebo effect. “Participants in the spiritual group might simply have expected benefits because they were practicing 'real' meditation", she said. But lead author Amy Wachholtz rejected this argument. She told the Digest: “It is unlikely that the effects were simply due to placebo because of the inclusion of the secular meditation condition. It is interesting that Professor Valentine described the spiritual meditation practice as the ‘real’ meditation practice, given that all participants received the exact same training in meditation. There are a number of meditation practices in both the popular culture and in use by psychologists that are described as secular forms of meditation. Therefore assignment to a secular meditation practice would not necessarily be deemed a lesser or unusual meditation practice by participants”.
___________________________________

Wachholtz, A.B. & Pargament, K.I. (2005). Is spirituality a critical ingredient of meditation? Comparing the effects of spiritual meditation, secular meditation, and relaxation on spiritual, psychological, cardiac, and pain outcomes. Journal of Behavioural Medicine, In Press. DOI: 10.1007/s10865-005-9008-5.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Does prayer work?

An American study has investigated the effect of prayer on patients undergoing heart surgery. Three hundred and seventy-one heart surgery patients who were prayed for by 12 religious congregations fared no better in the six months after their operation than 377 patients who were not prayed for. However, lead researcher Mitchell Krucoff at Duke University told Reuters that “This is not ‘God failed the test’ or ‘God passed the test’…it’s way too early”.

Other patients in the study received pre-surgery treatment from a ‘Healing Touch’ therapist, and were taught breathing exercises, visualised being in a peaceful place and played calming music. These patients were more likely to be alive six months after their operation and suffered far less distress than other patients. “We cannot discern with certainty whether the mechanism of this effect relates to the presence of a compassionate human being at the bedside or to any individual component of the treatment”, the researchers admitted.

The researchers pointed to several methodological concerns. For example, most of the participants, including a majority in the no-prayer group, said friends and family would be praying for them. Second, the prayer congregations in this study included Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist groups, but the results may have differed with a uniform prayer group, or if the faith of the people doing the praying had been matched to those being prayed for. There’s also the issue of when the prayers were performed – something not monitored here.

The study was motivated, the researchers wrote, by the fact that “bedside compassion and prayers for the sick” are practised throughout the world and yet scientific quantification of the “methods, mechanisms, safety, and effectiveness” of these practices have barely begun.
_________________________________

Krucoff, M.W., Crater, S.W., Gallup, D., Blankenship, J.C., Cuffe, M., Guarneri, M., Krieger, R.A., Ksheetry, V.R., Morris, K., Oz, M., Pichard, A., Sketch Jr., M.H., Koenig, H.G., Mark, D. & Lee, K.L. (2005). Music, imagery, touch, and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II randomised study. The Lancet, 366, 211-217.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.