Psychological Functions of Prayer: Findings from a Series of Experiments Comparing Prayer to Self-Talk

Resumen de los autores

Research on spiritual/religious practices has paid insufficient attention to the meaning-making frameworks distinguishing them from secular analogs. In three preregistered experiments, we tested whether increasing the salience of prayer among Jews affected felt security and positive and negative affect (Study 1), prosocial emotions (Study 2), and transcendence (Study 3) more than self-talk or routine-activity primes, and whether religiosity and attachment to God moderated these effects. Participants (n = 277, 209, 241) completed spirituality/religiosity measures and were randomized to reflect on prayer or one of two secular controls before completing outcome measures. Prayer increased felt security and empathic concern beyond both controls, whereas prayer and self-talk raised positive affect similarly above the routine activity; negative affect and personal distress were unaffected. Prayer also produced greater transcendence than the routine control, but not significantly more than self-talk. These effects were largely independent of religiosity, but avoidant attachment to God moderated prayer's effects on negative affect (Study 1) and transcendence (Study 3) in opposite directions. Prayer's benefits thus appear to reflect its relational, God-directed character rather than its self-regulatory function alone, though the specificity varies by outcome, with implications for how theories of religious ritual and spiritually integrated interventions conceptualize its active ingredients.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Cherniak, A., Granqvist, P., & Mikulincer, M. (2026). Psychological Functions of Prayer: Findings from a Series of Experiments Comparing Prayer to Self-Talk. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/e67h8_v1/