Study Says Religion Helps Us Gain Self-control

Religion gives people more self control, say researchers.

This was the result of a series of recent Queen's University study.

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"After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control," said psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding.

Study participants were given a sentence containing five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not.

After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete a number of tasks that required self-control - enduring discomfort, delaying gratification, exerting patience, and refraining from impulsive responses.

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Participants who had unscrambled the sentences containing religious themes had more self-control in completing their tasks.

"Our most interesting finding was that religious concepts were able to refuel self-control after it had been depleted by another unrelated task," said Rounding.

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"In other words, even when we would predict people to be unable to exert self-control, after completing the religiously themed task they defied logic and were able to muster self-control.

"Until now, I believed religion was a matter of faith; people had little 'practical' use for religion.

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"This research actually suggests that religion can serve a very useful function in society. People can turn to religion not just for transcendence and fears regarding death and an after-life but also for practical purposes," he added.

Source-ANI