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Cleansing the Soul by Hurting the Flesh: The Guilt-Reducing Effect of Pain
Lent in the Christian tradition is a time of sacrifice and penance. It also is a period of purification and enlightenment. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that’s
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Faith in a Higher Power: The Study of Religion in Psychology
Azim Shariff Michael Inzlicht, University of Toronto, opened the “Toward a Cognitive Science of Religion: Insights From Personality and Social Psychology” symposium in a somewhat unorthodox fashion: “By show of hands, who in this room
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Trust Your Gut? Study Explores Religion, Morality and Trust in Authority
Most of us strive to do what’s right, but we differ on how we get to the definition of right, with some basing their beliefs on religious teaching and others on a secular moral code.
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Brain Study Shows That Thinking About God Reduces Distress–But Only for Believers
Thinking about God may make you less upset about making errors, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The researchers measured brain waves for a
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Does believing soothe the worried mind?
Religious beliefs date back at least 100,000 years. That’s the time when our Neanderthal cousins began burying their dead with weapons and tools—presumably prepping them for the world beyond the grave. And such beliefs persist
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Does the Devil Really Wear Prada? The Psychology of Anthropomorphism and Dehumanization
People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as anthropomorphism), but