Faith reduces errors on psychology test

From World Science

At least for one type of test, be­lief in God can help re­duce mis­takes and anx­i­e­ty, ac­cord­ing to new re­search that al­so shows dis­tinct brain ac­ti­vity pat­terns in be­liev­ers.

In two stud­ies led by Uni­ver­s­ity of To­ron­to psy­cholo­g­ist Mi­chael In­zlicht, par­ti­ci­pants per­formed a Stroop task, a well-known psy­chological test that as­s­eses cog­ni­tive con­trol. Mean­while, elec­trodes meas­ured brain ac­ti­vity in the test-takers.

At least for one type of test, be­lief in God can help re­duce mis­takes and anx­i­e­ty, ac­cord­ing to new re­search that al­so shows dis­tinct brain ac­ti­vity pat­terns in be­liev­ers.

Com­pared to non-be­liev­ers, In­zlicht found, re­li­gious par­ti­ci­pants showed sig­nif­i­cantly less ac­ti­vity in a part of the brain called the an­te­ri­or cin­gu­late cor­tex. This struc­ture is be­lieved to help mod­i­fy be­hav­ior by sig­nal­ing when at­ten­tion and con­trol are needed, usu­ally as a re­sult of some anx­i­e­ty-producing event like mak­ing a mis­take.

The stronger their re­li­gious zeal and faith, the less cell ac­ti­vity in that zone-and the few­er er­rors sub­jects made, In­zlicht and col­leagues re­ported. They de­tailed the find­ings in the cur­rent on­line is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence.

The anterior cingu­late cor­tex might be thought of as an “alarm bell” that rings when some­one “has just made a mis­take or ex­pe­ri­ences un­cer­tain­ty,” said In­zlicht. “We found that re­li­gious peo­ple or even peo­ple who simply be­lieve in the ex­ist­ence of God show sig­nif­i­cantly less brain ac­ti­vity in rela­t­ion to their own er­rors. They’re much less anx­ious and feel less stressed when they have made an er­ror.”

These cor­rela­t­ions re­mained strong af­ter tak­ing in­to ac­count per­son­al­ity and cog­ni­tive abil­ity, In­zlicht re­marked. The find­ings, he added, show re­li­gious be­lief has a calm­ing ef­fect on its devo­tees, which makes them less likely to feel anx­ious about mak­ing er­rors or fac­ing the un­known.

The Stroop task meas­ures a per­son’s abil­ity to in­hib­it one re­ac­tion in or­der to do or say some­thing else that gives a cor­rect an­swer. For in­stance, a test-taker might be asked to quickly state the col­or ink in which a word is printed, though the word it­self names a dif­fer­ent col­or.

In­zlicht de­clined to ex­trap­o­late too much from the test re­sults to real life, cau­tion­ing that anx­i­e­ty is a “double-edged sword” that is some­times nec­es­sary and help­ful. Ex­ces­sive anx­i­e­ty may leave you “par­a­lyzed with fear,” he not­ed, but “it al­so serves a very use­ful func­tion in that it alerts us when we’re mak­ing mis­takes.” With­out that, “what im­pe­tus do you have to change or im­prove your be­hav­iour so you don’t make the same mis­takes again and again?”

I think that the last paragraph here about excessive anxiety or no anxiety is taking two extreme cases and commenting on them, which really says very little about typical people. I also find this test amusing because I don’t fit the results – I do very well on stroop tests – I really freaked out fellow students when we took them in groups during class to learn about them with an “inhuman” ability to fly through them. I wonder what that says about me?