Principal Investigator: Brad Bushman; Co-Principal Investigators: Ryan Bremmer

Templeton Foundation

Project Summary

In this project the effect of prayer on anger and aggression is investigated with a series of experiments with young adults as participants.  Our hypotheses are that we will find lower anger and aggression levels among angered people who pray for someone in need than among angered people who think about someone in need. Additionally, we expect praying for someone with different political ideas should reduce the tendency to experience greater anger toward such people. We also expect lower levels of physiological arousal (heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure) among angered people who pray for someone in need than among angered people who think about someone in need.  Finally, we predict that prayer will take away the effects of anger on personal responsibility judgments and will mitigate the effects of anger on negotiation strategies.  The experiments for this project are being initiated in the Fall of 2007.