Religious Rituals Foster Self-Control Among Believers

JOHN TIERNEY, who describes himself as a "nonbeliever" and who apparently does not attend church reports in the New York Times that psychologists Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby, two self described "social scientists," have ventured far afield from their discipline and "concluded that religious belief and piety promote self-control." The two psychologists profess their attempt "to understand why religion evolved and why it seems to help so many people." Mr. Tierney claims, without citing proof, that: "Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that devoutly religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and be generally happier. These results have been ascribed to the rules imposed on believers and to the social support they receive from fellow worshipers..." Mr. Tierney's article exposes religion to describe it as a hierarchically-based social structure that depends on the participation of "devout" followers of religion who organize around an authoritarian arrangement that promotes self-control. “We simply asked if there was good evidence that people who are more religious have more self-control,” Dr. McCullough (added)... "When you add it all up, it turns out there are remarkably consistent findings that religiosity correlates with higher self-control... Brain-scan studies have shown that when people pray or meditate, there’s a lot of activity in two parts of brain that are important for self-regulation and control of attention and emotion,” Dr. McCullough conjectured. “The rituals that religions have been encouraging for thousands of years seem to be a kind of anaerobic workout for self-control... It looks as if people come to associate religion with tamping down these temptations (like drugs or premarital sex),” Dr. McCullough said. “When temptations cross their minds in daily life, they quickly use religion to dispel them from their minds.” What Mr. Tierney fails to mention is whether the two psychologists, Dr. Michael McCullough and Dr. Brian Willoughby studied religion as a manifestation of authoritarian control. A question the two psychologists seem unconcerned with. Authoritarianism requires it's participants to submit to the self-control of restraint in order to maintain unquestioned belief or faith. Self-control motivates believers to willingly accept the authoritarian nature of religion. Dr. McCullough makes the case for the tendency of some individuals to devoutly hold onto the authoritarianism of religion: "Sacred values come prefabricated for religious believers,.. The belief that God has preferences for how you behave and the goals you set for yourself has to be the granddaddy of all psychological devices for encouraging people to follow through with their goals. That may help to explain why belief in God has been so persistent through the ages.” The work of Dr. McCullough and Dr. Willoughby engages questions that far exceed the scope of Mr. Tierney's article and suggests a more rigorous examination of hominid neurological development and the relevance of hierarchical structures used to explain the natural and the supernatural. At most, Mr. Tierney has produced a cute and seasonal tale that attempts to praise religion at the expense of those not so taken by it's powers.