Does religion reduce aggression?
The Myth: Religious activities such as meditation, prayer, and reading the Bible reduce aggressive behavior.
The Truth: Wrong. At least with provoked aggression. After being "primed for peace," by either reading a Bible passage or meditating for 5 minutes, 42 Christian subjects selected the intensities of electrical shocks to give to opponents in response to shocks they themselves received. Both groups turned the dial up just as high as a control group assigned to read Time magazine.
"Most people in the first two groups reported feeling more connected to a higher power after those five minutes," says Mark Leach of the University of Southern Mississippi. "So something was going on." But that "something" didn't make them less shock-happy.
Leach and his co-authors also looked at subjects' religious orientations. While those who claim to practice religion in the service of God are no more peaceful than the rest of us, they believe that they are. Meanwhile, those who say they're religious for personal gains (e.g., relief and protection) give themselves higher aggression ratings than do most people—and indeed back it up in the lab.
