Believing in God might help religious people block anxiety when under stress, finds new research from the University of Toronto that looked at brain differences between believers and non-believers.
The studies, led by assistant psychology professor Michael Inzlicht, involved a small group of participants who answered questionnaires about their belief in God and their level of religious zeal.
The volunteers were then asked to perform a Stroop task -- a well-known psychological test that measures the reaction time while performing tasts such as identifying colours quickly.
The subjects were hooked up to electrodes that measured activity in the area of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is involved in emotion control and helps us to modify behaviour during an anxiety-producing event such as making a mistake.
Inzlicht's team found that those volunteers who considered themselves religious showed significantly less activity in the ACC compared to non-believers -- suggesting they were experiencing less anxiety during the test and when they made mistakes.
The stronger their religious zeal and the more they believed in God, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, the study found.
"In fact, we did not find religious people made more errors -- they actually made significantly fewer errors, which was very interesting to us," Inzlicht told CTV.ca.
"We're not sure how to explain that yet."
Inzlicht and study co-author by Dr. Ian McGregor at York University say they had each of the subjects fill questionnaires that measured their personality types, their IQ and their level of self-esteem -- and none of those factors seemed to influence the brain test results. The only factor that made a significant difference was the subjects' religious conviction.
Inzlicht says his team is not ready to say that a belief in God causes one to be less anxious; but the correlation was found so repeatedly, he believes the findings are significant and require further investigation.
The study findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.
Not all anxiety is detrimental, Inzlicht points out. While it can become crippling, it is also useful for alertness and self-preservation. It's possible belief in God brings a peace of mind to believer, and may keep people on the optimal side of anxiety, Inzlicht suggests.
"Religion provides meaning to many people. It helps people to understand what to do, where to go next, what decision to make. It may be that having this sense of meaning reduces their anxiety," says Inzlicht.
"But that's not to say one can only find meaning in religion."
There can be meaning found from other sources, such as one's political views. He is not looking into study into this area of research as well.
