Praying Can Relieve Anger, Really? Here's What Psychology Studies Say

Illustration of praying (Freepik)

JAKARTA - Prayer according to each belief has psychological benefits. A series of scientific studies in psychology show that good prayer is the most effective way of controlling emotions, anger, and aggression.

A study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2011 examined the effect of prayer on anger and aggression. As reported from Psychology Today, Wednesday, April 14, prayer is useful as reassessing events and reflecting on anger.

The study instructed participants to write past experiences that angered them. Then asked to pair up and give feedback based on each writing.

Anger was present and in another session of the study, they were told about a student who was battling rare cancer. Some participants were asked to pray for him and others weighed the instruction alias not to pray.

Finally, they were asked to report their anger. Participants who prayed for the student were less angry than those who just thought about it.

When exploring the effects of prayer and aggression, participants were asked to write down experiences and reconstruct angry events with participants' 'spouses'. Participants are instructed to only think and pray for an angry 'partner'.

After this session passed, researchers found the results that participants who prayed were more able to control aggression than those who thought only of their partners.

Importantly, this study found type of prayers that relieve anger and aggression are only good prayers. A vengeful prayer is likely to increase anger and aggression.

According to Guy Winch, Ph.D., prayer serves as a form of reassessment and can change our understanding of an event so that it has an effect on the intensity of anger and aggression.

In psychology, this is called reappraisal or a form of emotional regulation in which we change the underlying meaning of a student and this can change the emotional reaction to the event.

Besides being reappraisal, prayer is also a tool to reduce the contemplation of repeating angry events. Instead of just replaying events in the mind and becoming angrier, then one needs spiritual help by praying, one of them.