Is prayer a form of problem solving for the person praying?
Eleanor Schille-Hudson, postdoctoral research scientist in the department of anthropology at Stanford University, discusses why it may be the case.
A cognitive scientist by training, she studies how people rely on their priors, habituated behaviors, social networks, and cultural context to make sense of the world around them, seen and unseen.
The Problem-Solving Power of Prayer
Through over 100 interviews with U.S. Christians, I learned that prayer is not only a quiet moment in the day, a time to ask God for blessings, or an opportunity to state beliefs. Rather, prayer is a cognitive practice chock full of problem-solving resources. Prayer helps people identify and articulate the problems they are facing, make plans for solving the problem, and reflect on past solutions and pitfalls. To people who pray regularly, God is not a deus ex machina, swooping in and solving problems on their behalf, but a collaborator.
Interviewees described a delegation process in which they “gave parts of the problem to God,” especially parts of the problem outside their control like the feelings or behaviors of other people. In doing so, they could focus on the parts of the problem that they could control, releasing the other parts of the problem to God, whom they trusted.
As an outside observer, what matters is not whether God exists, but that God exists to these people. I also set aside whether what they pray for “comes true.” Rather, I investigated the ways that prayer is a part of practitioners’ problem solving processes. It may seem strange to think about prayer as either collaborative or as problem solving. In fact, psychological research tells us that collaboration is a primary way that people approach their problems.
Figuring out how to solve a problem is itself a hard problem. It requires finding information, but it also involves persistence. It takes motivation and grit to stick with a problem and work your way through it. We can think about prayer as an everyday tool that people reach for to untangle everyday problems, helping them to feel less alone as they do so.
Read More:
[Aeon] – The Power of Prayer
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