There have been three main types of prayer studied scientifically to
gauge their efficacy. The most obvious one is second person prayer, which is
performed by someone who knows the person they are praying about. Second person
prayers directly ask a higher power for the person to be helped, as do third
person prayers, which are performed by a stranger. First person prayer not only
includes the petition to god but also can include self-meditation beforehand,
and is a separate type of prayer.
Third person prayer and divine
intervention
In order to test second and third person prayers, both blinded and
non-blinded experiments have been set up. The general format is as such: two
groups of people in hospital for similar problems are chosen (for example,
people with the same cancer). One group of people is prayed for, while the
other group is not. The health of the patients is measured, either using
variables like blood pressure and heart rate, or by more subjective measures
such as perceived comfort or number of visits required by a doctor. In third
party experiments, the patients are prayed for by strangers, whereas in second
person experiments, the friends and family are asked to pray for their loved
ones. Again, there is difficulty in ensuring that a fixed number of people are
praying - there is nothing stopping friends who are not part of the study from
asking for the patient's good health. In a blinded experiment, the only people that
know who is being prayed for are the people doing the praying, i.e. neither the
doctor nor the patient knows if the patient is being prayed for. This is the
most scientifically rigorous method; in non-blinded studies it is impossible to
rule out the placebo effect.
The best way to test whether there was any godly interference in aiding
a patient's recovery is a third party, blinded trial. These come as close to
having one independent variable as any prayer study can for a number of
reasons. Firstly, the people praying have no affiliation to the patient, rather
than having any personal attachment, so fervour of the prayer is not affected,
as it might be in second party studies, where there could be differing levels
of attachment to the patient by the people praying. Secondly, by artificially
selecting who is doing the praying, it is possible to ensure everyone is of the
same denomination, piety, and prayer skill level, simply by using one
congregation from the same church. This also allows participants to be randomly
selected, rather than only those with religious family and friends. Lastly,
because it is blinded, there is no chance that the placebo effect could
contribute to the findings. In experiments like this, there is also the
opportunity to test the effect of a "placebo prayer".
Despite the relatively
little amount of money spent on studying spiritual healing, there have been thousands
of studies in the past 30 years.5 Not all of them fit these
criteria, however, and not all are published in peer reviewed journals, either.
One of the biggest and most thorough studies was STEP, the study on therapeutic
effects of prayer,6 which studied 1802 patients recovering from the
same surgery in 6 different hospitals. There were three groups: two which were
told they may or may not receive intercessory prayer, and one which was told it
definitely would. Of the first two, one group received prayer and the other did
not. They were then monitored for 30 days following the surgery for any
complications. Significant events and deaths were also measured. The group
certain of receiving prayer had a 59% chance of complications. The two groups
uncertain had a 51% (if they were not prayed for) or 52% (if they were not)
chance of complications in the 30-day period. That is to say, there was no
significant difference between whether or not they were actually prayed for,
but knowing that they would be prayed for decreased the chance of an
uncomplicated recovery. Part of the reason that the STEP program was important
was because it is one of the few studies
that primarily looked for negative results (or the lack thereof). This
eliminates the bias prevalent in other studies towards looking for a benevolent
god; in those studies, the only outcomes are positive results or no significant
results. The existence of this bias highlights an interesting assumption in
prayer studies, which is that the results, if there are any, are presumed to be
beneficial to humans. The trial still did not address other issues, for example
it still treats god as an impersonal, mechanical being who responds in
calculable ways to given stimuli. Critics argue that there is no room for any
answer other than "yes, prayers are answered" or "no, prayers
are never answered"; there should be provisions for an answer along the
lines of "not now", or "not always". 7
There are also various
meta-analyses on the studies conducted in order to corroborate their
results. These reviews usually select
the literature they use with the criteria listed above, but some are more
strict, and there is also a comment on the methodology of each experiment in
the paper. The most recent results used 17 trials, and found significant effects
of prayer in 7 of them.8 This is the general trend in such papers:
there is some evidence that religious healing helps the patient, but those
results tend to come from the more subjective measurements or less rigorous
trials.8 Even these summaries of research are unclear and regularly
contradict each other, unfortunately.
First person prayer and meditation
Even without miraculous help from a
god, it is conceivable that the actual act of prayer could have some
therapeutic effect. It was found that recitation of a Latin prayer or a mantra
increased heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity (the receptors that
effect changes in heart rate) in a 2001 study by Bernadi et al..9
This is known to be associated with better prognosis in heart conditions and is
a good indicator of exercise tolerance, and oxygenation of the blood, amongst
other things. The mechanism by which it effects this change is thought to be to
do with the rate of respiration and its synchronisation with other rhythms in
the body, such as rise and fall of blood pressure. It is known that a slow
respiratory rate decreases myocardial ischaemia, and the waves in blood
pressure are about 0.1 Hz, i.e. one every 10 seconds. Therefore, in order for
respiration to be synchronous with blood pressure, an ideal breathing rate
would be 6 breaths per minute.
In the Bernardi study, various
factors were measured during normal breathing, normal talking, and recitation of religious mantras. As is shown
in the figure, talking slowed down respiration, and recitation further slowed
it down and synchronised it with blood flow and blood pressure waves.
Both the Ave Maria (in Latin) and a
yoga mantra were studied, in order to test whether the different disciplines
affected the results. Remarkably, both slowed the breathing down to almost 10
second cycles, or 6 per minute, which coincides with the spontaneous cycles of
blood pressure (see figure), which suggests that they both evolved to have
roughly the same rhythm. This breathing system also makes people feel calmer,
and so it makes sense for people to prefer those prayers, which is how they
have come in to common usage. There is also historical evidence that the
mantras of India
influenced those of the middle east, which the crusaders then brought back to
the western world to form the Christian prayers that we still use today.
Therefore, there is some evidence that the act of saying some prayers is
physiologically beneficial, especially in people who have some form of heart
disease or are at risk of a heart attack.
Prayer is often recorded through
anecdotal evidence to be relaxing or empowering; it is more difficult to
measure psychological symptoms, but studies have also been conducted on this. For
example, in 1988, a study was conducted by Carlson et al., designed to test
stress reduction effects of meditative prayer compared to relaxation training
(and also a control group), using tension in the frontalis muscle and skin
temperature as indicators of anxiety.10 It was found that this
meditation produced significantly more stress reduction than the control group
or the group undergoing relaxation training. It has been recorded, however,
that prayer is not always successful, particularly if done alone.11
This is because people praying alone are more likely to only dwell on their
guilt and failings, whereas in a group, there is a curative environment,
guidance and support from others in the group. Thus is it possible to pray
"incorrectly", from a medical point of view, although the
physiological mechanisms behind the psychological symptoms are still unclear;
it is associated with increased cortical activity, as when the body is alert (Levin,
2001), but little else is known.
There is some further evidence that "integrating
prayer into day-to-day life" makes one a kinder, more empathic person.12
According to the study, based on qualitative judgements, they were less likely
to get very irate, and more likely to be more friendly towards others, even
individuals who were hard to get along with. This is probably because the same
group of people are more likely to live by the principles of their religion
(the trial only included Christians), which involves turning the other cheek
and not judging other people.
Conclusion
The current research into
intercessory prayer has inconclusive results, due in part to the methodology
and inherently supernatural nature of the trials. In general there does seem to
be a positive effect of distant prayer, although not statistically significant,
and potentially because of the way results are recorded. In order for studies
to progress, there needs to be an objective, quantitative measure of general
health, which can be measured as "good" or "bad", and
multiple repeats using different religions, methods of prayer, and levels of
ability of prayer. Even then it is unlikely such a trial would be accepted by
the religious community because of the problems with "artificial
prayer".
Trials involving first person prayer
are more successful - stress is reduced by it and recitation of some prayers
helps to improve heart conditions and hypertension, amongst other things. There
is a proposed mechanism for the latter, but the former would merit more
research as well in order to help differentiate the biological methods of
prayer and relaxation training as a stress reducer.
Bibliography
1.James 5:15, King James Version
2.P.M. Barnes et al., "Complementary and
Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults: United States , 2002", 2004
3. Pope Jean Paul II, "Apostolic
letter, novo millennio ineunte",
2000
4. St. Louis de Montfort, "The secret of
the rosary", c.17th century
5. Michelle Boorstein, "Study of health
and religosity growing despite critiscism", 2008
6. Benson et al., "Study of the
Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a
multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving
intercessory prayer", 2006
7. M. Jantos and H. Kiat, "Prayer as medicine: how much have we
learned?", 2007
8. D. R. Hodge, "A Systematic Review of the
Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer", 2007
9. Bernardi et al., "Effect of rosary
prayer and yoga mantras on autonomic cardiovascular rhythms: comparative study",
2001
10. J. Martin and C. Carlson, "Spiritual dimensions
of health psychology", 1988
11. Parker and St. Johns, "Prayer Can Change Your Life", 1957
12. S. Morgan, "A research note on
religion and morality: Are religious people nice people?", 1983
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