Prayer, Not Positive Thinking

You often hear people say that things are in their "thoughts and prayers". But apparently it's the latter that really makes the difference relationally. Here's the experiment:

In the first, they had a group of men and women pray for their romantic partner. It was just a single prayer for their partner’s well-being, spoken privately in a quiet room. Others—the experimental controls—also went into a quiet room, where they simply described their partner, speaking into a tape recorder.

Then they meaured forgiveness. When someone hurts you, it’s human nature to want to strike back, retaliate—or to withdraw from the relationship. The scientists defined forgiveness as the diminishing of these initial negative feelings, and when they analyzed all the data, the results were clear: Those who had prayed for their partner harbored fewer vengeful thoughts and emotions: They were more ready to forgive and move on.

That was another great find from Eric Barker. Here are two other articles about whether prayer actually increases the health of prayers and prayees (if that's a word).