How do you deal with anger? According to a new study, prayer might be a healthy solution.

Reverend Whit Malone, pastor of the Collegiate Presbyterian Church in Ames, doesn’t know whether he agrees with the study or if it simply doesn’t surprise him.

“As a Christian, I think of prayer as our primary way of bringing ourselves into the presence of God,” Malone said. “If I am angry, and if I am intentional about bringing my anger to God, I would expect that in most cases I would have my perspective on the person and the situation somehow changed.”

Malone said this doesn’t mean that he may not have had good reasons for anger, nor does it mean that God always sees anger as a bad thing. Malone pointed out that the Book of Psalms in the Bible depicts many of God’s people praying out of their anger.

“The point is that they’re bringing it to God rather than striking out against the offender,” Malone said. “I believe that whenever we bring our daily issues and struggles to God, God receives them and gives them back to us with a new perspective.”

Much of the study was conducted at Ohio State University and co-authored by Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology, who has conducted a great deal of research focused on religion’s relationship to violence during the course of his career. He conducted the research with Ryan Bremner, graduate student at the University of Michigan, and Sander Koole of the VU University in Amsterdam.

The first study involved 22 men and 31 women, all of which were American college students. The students completed a Profile of Mood States test to measure emotions of anger, fatigue, depression, vigor, and tension. The participants were then given five minutes to write an essay about an event that made them feel very angry. The essays were given to an unseen partner for evaluation. All the participants received negative ratings on their essays, and a comment was written on all of them saying, “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read!” This method came from one of Bushman’s previous studies, and was used to provoke anger in the participants.

After the participants were provoked by their evaluations, they read a newspaper article about a student named Maureen with a rare form of cancer in order to induce empathy in the participants. They were asked to imagine themselves in Maureen’s shoes, and then randomly assigned to either pray for her or simply think about her for five minutes. To keep participants from catching onto what the study was about, they were not asked to report on the content of their prayers or thoughts.

Before the study began, extensive research was conducted in which participants were asked to reveal what they prayed and thought about after reading the article:

“I told God that this really touches me, I prayed that I hope that God will help Maureen because she really needs it,” said a participant in the early study. “A girl like this does not deserve something this bad, so I hope that many people will be willing to help her.”

“I felt compassion for Maureen and her family, what this poor girl and her loved ones must be going through,” said another participant in the early study, who was asked to simply think about the student. “I find such things really unfair.”

After the prayer and thought period, the participants retook the test, along with questions about their religions, how often they attended church or worship services, and how often they prayed. While tension, depression, fatigue and vigor remained unchanged, anger was significantly lowered, as Bushman expected.

The second experiment tested if prayer reduced actual aggressive behavior, as opposed to simply angry feelings. The study involved 29 men and 53 women, all of which were American college students. Some of the students were provoked by negative feedback in a similar method as used in the first study, while others wrote about the layout of their campus instead of an event that made them angry, and were given positive feedback from their unseen partners with the written comment, “Good job. Nice essay.”

The students then prayed or thought about their unseen partner for five minutes, which they were told was to help them form a more valid impression of the person. After this, the participants competed with their “partners” in a test of reaction time. The students had to press a button as quickly as possible several times, and the slower participant would hear a loud, punishing noise through headphones. The students controlled how long the noise lasted, as well as its volume.

Provoked students were more aggressive with the noise, and provoked students who had prayed for their partners showed a normal level of aggression, potentially canceling out the earlier provocations.

The final experiment was conducted at a Dutch university with 18 male students and 38 female students, all of which were specifically required to be Christian. Students were again randomly selected to be secretly provoked or not provoked, and they again either received criticism for their essays on a situation that angered them, or received praise from their essays about a meal they enjoyed.

In the second part of the study, both groups of students were asked to think about or pray for a friend in need. They were then asked to judge the likelihood of several life events, ranging from things caused by specific people, like missing a flight because of a bad cab driver, to events that cannot be blamed on one person, like losing all your money because of a recession. The provoked students who simply thought about their friend still had angry responses when judging the hypothetical events, whereas the provoked students that prayed for their friend didn’t have anger-related views.

Malone was touched on a personal level when he read about the study.

“I get angry at people like everyone else,” Malone said. “And yet, I know that Christianity is at least as much about the other person as it is about me and my anger. Jesus teaches us that.”

Malone said Jesus’ teachings focused much of the time on turning the other cheek and praying for those who persecute us.

“So whenever I feel like I am unjustly hurt or wronged, I do try to pray for the person who hurt me,” Malone said. “And yes, I do find my perspective changed and my level of anger decreased.”

However, the study is not without its problems. Malone is concerned that those that read about the study could interpret prayer to simply be a verbal aspirin, and simply added to a list of anger management techniques. Malone said prayer is much deeper than that.

“Though I appreciate scholars studying things like this, I hope that folks read this and find an invitation into something more than just an ‘anger management technique,'” Malone said. “I hope folks will want to go further than that.”

Hector Avalos, professor of religious studies and faculty adviser to Iowa State’s Atheist and Agnostic Society, is concerned with the study itself, and cited the potential lack of religious diversity in the study as an explanation for why the study might be biased.

“The study does not seem to appreciate the rich and complex theological history of prayer, which can range from cursing enemies to pleas for God to forgive enemies,” Avalos said. “So, can a group of ’53 American college students’ really represent such diversity?”

The study does not disclose the religious affiliations of the participants in the first two experiments, and states that this and other variables not discussed didn’t affect the results of the study. Avalos said that seeing the diversity in the study would have been useful, if only to determine how much of a religious diversity the participants actually had. He also said that not disclosing such information could be a sign that the researchers studied a sample group that didn’t truly represent the people who pray.

“Imagine an experiment that included members of Fred Phelps’ church in which prayer is supposed to express anger toward those who don’t follow God’s word as they understand it,” Avalos said. “Would the results be similar?”

Avalos also pointed out that the study alluded to other studies that led toward the concept that religion always had positive, pro-social benefits, with no studies listed that found other results that may have contradicted this belief.

For example, the study mentioned another past experiment which found that exposing participants to religious words — e.g. holy, heaven, etc. — decreased cheating in the next test those students took. However, the Bushman study did not include any citations to another study that found the amount of cheating done between Christians and non-Christians to be roughly the same.

“In general, I support the use of good experimental and quantitative data to support conclusions about religious behavior,” Avalos said. “I just wish that the experimenters had availed themselves of more information, from scholars of religion, about the complexity and variability of attitudes toward prayer within different religious and cultural traditions.”

Susan Cross, associate professor of psychology, said, “Yes, religion does seem to be positively related to mental health, in that religious people — at least those in the U.S. — tend to be happier than non-religious people.”

She cited a study to support her claim. The study, done by David Meyers and published in American Psychologist in 2000, found that “In surveys taken in various nations, religiously active people also report somewhat higher levels of happiness.

National Opinion Research Center surveys reveal higher levels of ‘very happy’ people among those who feel ‘extremely close to God,’ 41 percent, rather than ‘somewhat close,’ 29 percent, or ‘not close or unbelieving,’ 23 percent. Self-rated spirituality and happiness may both be socially desirable responses, however.”

In his research, Meyers said that religion itself might not be the reason for extra happiness, but rather the various activities that go hand in hand with religious practices.

“A partial explanation seems to be that faith communities provide social support. Religion is usually practiced communally, involving ‘the fellowship of kindred spirits,’ ‘the bearing of one another’s burdens,’ and ‘the ties of love that bind.’ Another possible explanation for the faith-well-being correlation is the sense of meaning and purpose that many people derive from their faith.”

Lastly, religion could satisfy “the most fundamental human need of all. That is the need to know that somehow we matter, that our lives mean something, count as something more than just a momentary blip in the universe.”

Brian Peck, president of The Rock Christian Students at Iowa State, believes that for a Christian, prayer, more than anything else, is simply the act of talking to God.

“We are aware that we do not approach God because we in ourselves are worthy, but rather we approach God in prayer fully aware of the grace He showed us through Christ,” Peck said. “In doing so, we are reminded of this grace and our hearts are softened such that we can extend this grace to those who offend us.”

Peck said that when Christians pray, they are reminded of the truth of God’s forgiveness and are encouraged to forgive others, as is taught in the Bible.

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving of one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Peck is also suspicious of the study from a scientific standpoint, citing the lack of diversity in the study. But he also believes there’s some merit to it.

“If the point is that prayer changes hearts, I completely agree,” Peck said.