Praying for your partner stops you straying

This is a typically poorly-designed "experiment" that has produced totally unreliable results. Self-reported information is notoriously unreliable and the "follow-up" mechanism was worthless with regards to actual behavior. All we can deduce is that people who pray genuinely believe in what they are doing and this correlates with their reports on their own mental states. But people are notoriously self-deceiving. A golden rule is "don't listen to what people say, watch what they actually do." Until actual real-world behavior is monitored over a meaningful period of time, there's no data on the correlation between what people think about things versus what they actually do.

The Economist should desist from publishing the results of such studies which can only become an excuse for religious propagandists to further their cause, strengthened as they will be by citing such research. In any case the results obtained in the study are both ambiguous and too insignificant to warrant the biases apparent in the title of the article and the concluding recommendation. Firstly, the sample size (83 participants) is astonishingly small for a wide-ranging study of this kind. Also the 4-week duration of the study needs justification as to whether it is long enough to enable the researchers to obtain these differences in ratings with any measure of confidence.

But keeping such considerations apart, the article is still problematic. Never is it mentioned that the study, while perhaps showing the importance (read utility) of religion in romantic relationships, far more importantly points to the main playground: human psychology. This inference is amply obvious - the fact that the participants were (supposedly independently of their religious leanings) randomly assigned prayer tasks for 4-weeks before being asked to re-evaluate their relationships, is clear pointer to the psychological underpinnings of fidelity and what not. This, while being amply clear to the rational among us, will only be conveniently overlooked by religious groups looking to use this to claim scientific substantiation of the "Almighty" working in mysterious ways in romantic relationships.

The ultimate triangulation? Let God, if not another being of the flesh and blood kind, come between the sheets.

Did they specify who you have to pray to? My last relationship ended really badly after I prayed to one of the Old Gods from an H.P. Lovecraft novel.

Now I understand why people invented religion.

When the Economist reports on (interesting) journal publications, it should do better to clean up its wording and point out some potential weaknesses, such as the lack of "hard" measures. Its saves us readers the trouble of doing the writer's job for him or her in this comments section :( I would dare say such a review would never pass peer-review muster :(

One of the benefits of religious beliefs and practices is reinforcement of impulse controls, in the avoidance of behaviors that damage or endanger self, family or community.

Classic Liberal has it rightly. Most of us who engage in infidelity do so out of anger and frustration with our partners, not out of momentary lust. It's passive-aggressive acting out, 'getting back' at partners, where communication is blocked, partners are abusive or controlling, or where value imbalances have shifted action away from partnership to enforced co-habitation.

No surprise that prayer, which explicitly couples positive thinking towards a spouse with reinforced beliefs of a sacred bond in paired relationships, improves behavioral controls that avoid thoughts of infidelity. Moreover, it may help dampen anger over former transgressions, grudges or serious misunderstandings, and facilitate forgiveness and understanding. The latter can, of course, backfire, forging a pattern of abuse and it's facilitation, but that occurs when beliefs and actions underlie serious mismatch in core values. In most cases, praying for understanding, tolerance, and love and knowing that your partner/spouse is doing the same, has positive outcomes and reduces stress and positive thinking and action.

I liked this article.

I think this survey result takes a beating in the face of the current Church scandal...

I propose a hard-and-fast rule for The Economist: anything in the "Science and Technology" section must link to a peer-reviewed publication.

This study, as so many in the psychology literature, is done on WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) subjects. More comprehensive studies have shown that WEIRD subjects can be outliers on important experiments. There is no reason to think that this would be an exception. Why should we pay attention to this particular study except as it pertains to married psychology undergraduates at American universities?

I'm a bit more impressed than CA-Oxonian by the subjective view of third-party observers but agree with him/her that the subjective views of the study subjects themselves is weak evidence. We need longitudinal studies looking at infidelity over the course of people's married lives.

What an interesting article. . . thank you Economist.

Did you know that penguins mate for life, and they don't even have to pray for their partner's fidelity because they are naturally faithfull? Why did the almighty create human men in a way that they have to screw every single whore they can get? Or, may be, it's not the creator's fault really since he created too much human female variety and gave men 3 billion choices/temptations including the choice not to cheat. Wow, poor men! They are in a pretty tough situation there. I would be completely lost.

The results shouldn't be too surprising. After all, any omniscient god is the ultimate Big Brother. I can't help but think that when people start reminding their partner Big Brother is watching (over?) them that they'd alter their behaviour. I wonder if the results would hold if the prayers were about speeding tickets instead of fidelity? Now that would be an interesting study that could be easily verified!

CA-Oxonian. Yes self-report has its problems and observing behavior is important. There is an attempt to get at behavior in the last study. Is it less than optimal? Yes, but when it comes to infidelity ethics limits what can be observed. Let's hear from CA-Oxonian how s/he would address this issue better via behavioral data.

I presume they did not do this research on the students from the Sciences departments... I wonder, if those students would be a lot more unfaithful)))

- God, why don't you kill yourself already?
- I have, too bad I am immortal.

For years now, I have been thinking about my partner's positive characteristics and wishing for her well-being as I gaze at the cork bouncing merrily at the end of my fishing line. This seems to work well also.

That explains everything.

VK (fourth-generation infidel)

Shumba: well said!