David DeSteno
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
You know, I'm here saying things like grieving rituals, things like meditation and contemplation increase people's well-being. They certainly do. And so people leave these religions. They're looking to fill those. They're looking to find connection to something, to other people, to something greater than themselves. How that's going to shake out in society right now, We don't know.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
But what we do know is people are doing more and more things alone, and loneliness is up. And one of the ways that religion really affects people's health and well-being is by providing a sense of community and by ritualizing it. You know, if you join a club, it's like, well, maybe I'll go this week. Maybe I won't go next week.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
But if you're practicing a faith, there are all of these elements built in that regularly bring you together. And when you're there, have you engage in activities that psychologically make you feel more bonded? How that's going to shake out over the next decade or so with people leaving traditional faiths, I think we don't know.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
We don't know the answer to that. What we do know is that is that there are some kind of longitudinal data. And by that, what I mean is, is you follow people as they age. That shows that solves the causality problem. That is, if people become more religious, they then have better outcomes. So we know the directionality there.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
It's not just like the people who are religious are also people who take better care of themselves. Religion can cause them to take better care of themselves, etc. But the mechanisms by which it's going to do that are going to be many, right? It reduces stress. Reducing stress gives you better health. People who are more dedicated to religion often abuse substances less, have less depression.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
That will make you feel better. They have more community. They're less lonely. Loneliness is as bad for your health as is smoking in terms of the years it takes off your life if it's chronic. So I think there's going to be a lot of mechanisms by which it works.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Yeah, and I think there are a lot of people who aren't sure what they believe, yet partake for the very reason that you're saying. I know many of them. In fact, I know some strident atheists who go to church every Sunday because singing those hymns and being with other people and attending those events brings them a feeling of solace.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
But I think there's also this kind of backlash, especially in more urban educated society of, oh, religion is silly. It's for people who don't know any better. And so I know there are a lot of people who feel like if I don't completely buy into religion, I'm either smarter or if I go, I'm kind of being fake. And I think the question people have to realize with religion is even people who practice
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
There are times they doubt their faith as well. And I don't think it's an all or nothing thing. I don't think you're all in or you're all out. But if you are all out, as you said, you are going to be missing some of the benefits there.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Yeah, and the thing I say is, look, I'm a scientist. Have I seen any data that would make me believe in God? No. But does that mean I definitely know God's not there? Again, even Richard Dawkins, most famous atheist around, will say he can't be sure. And so I think let's not have arguments about something that we can't answer, right?
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And let's partake in the benefits that come in a way that speaks to us. And let's have a little intellectual humility, right? This is the problem with many people on both sides. There are scientists who are so sure that they know that all religion is nonsense and there is no God, that they look down on people who think the other.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And there are some fundamentalists in religion who are so sure that the word of the Bible or the Koran or the Torah, whatever the text is, is all there is and science is wrong. And I think on both sides, that level of self-confidence is really more hubris because we don't know.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And if we put that question aside, then we can actually, I think, hopefully work together to try and figure out how to make life better for all of us and be open to other people's perspectives and trying things.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
There haven't been really scientific comparisons. What I can say, and there tends to be a lot of convergences. That is, people, if you look at different types of practices and rituals at different life stages, there's a lot they share. But there also are some that deal with certain challenges better than others.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Like I think Judaism deals with grief, the rituals of Shiva, better than, say, Christianity does. So I think they're all good. There hasn't been an empirical examination of is one better than the other. But I think in certain cases here and there, different religions do have better approaches that we can quantify scientifically. And that work is that work is just starting.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
necessarily yeah it's your view of it and it's and it's how those practices that you engage in affect you and because more of them are shared if you take away the words of the prayers or the specific beliefs if you put those to the side there's a lot of overlap in the practices and i think that's why it doesn't really matter so much which which faith it is
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Yes, there's the faith, but there's also the doing of religion. And outside of Christianity, a lot of religions really are more defined by the doing, what you do daily in terms of your practices and rituals more than your beliefs. And I think that's where a lot of the scientific focus should go. What does the doing of those practices do for people?
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
It's been, it's been a pleasure.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
today on something you should know a simple way to get more done in less time and only one out of five people do it then religion science tells us that being religious is good for your health and if you look at the data what it shows is that people who are engaged with their religion so it's not just believing it's not just saying you believe in god but people who engage with the spiritual practices of their religion tend to live longer healthier and happier lives
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
It's a good question. You know, what led me to this wasn't any pre-existing agenda, I was just following the data. And if you look at the data, what it shows is that people who are engaged with their religion, so it's not just believing, it's not just saying you believe in God, but people who engage with the spiritual practices of their religion tend to live longer, healthier, and happier lives.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And so what we're finding out as scientists is what it really is, is that in the practice of religion, whether it's prayer, whether it's meditation, whether it's grieving rituals, all of these things nudge our minds and bodies in ways that help us deal with life's challenges. And as a scientist, it's my goal to try and understand how that works.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
and to see if we can extract anything from that wisdom for people who might not be a member of a traditional faith.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Yeah, I mean, I was raised Catholic, but I kind of left the church and have no religious affiliation. But what I found in my research, you know, is that... A lot of the practices that spiritual traditions ask people to engage in, I'll give you an example in a minute, makes their health and their well-being better. And because there's data there, that's what I want to follow.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
I think asking the question as a scientist, does God exist, is kind of useless. It's not that it's not an important question, but it's not a question science can answer. So you can think of these practices as something that a divine God gave to his, her, or its creatures to help them.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Or you can think of them as things that people stumbled into and that have been honed over the centuries to help people live better lives. And I can't answer that question. But what I can tell you is that they help us in many ways meet life's challenges.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Yeah, I mean, in those practices, so when you go, let's use Christmas for the time of the year, as you're saying, part of what those ritual practices do and the giving and the singing together, et cetera, they create feelings of connection. So, for example, one way I got into this is In my lab, we were trying to see how we could make people feel more connected.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And we had them sit across from each other, strangers, and we had them put on earphones. And they had to simply tap their hands on a sensor on the table as they heard beats. And we rigged the beats so that they were either, they would be tapping their hands in synchrony, or they'd be kind of, you know, completely random and out of sync.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And what we found is that simple act of moving in synchrony made people feel not only more connected to one another, these were complete strangers, but they subsequently reported feeling more connection to one another. And then when we created a situation where one of them got stuck doing something god-awful, a really boring task, the other people were more willing to come and help them.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And so what you can see is that simple act of doing things together makes people feel more connected, makes them feel more compassionate and have empathy for each other. And work since that time has shown that if you do this in a religious context, it is even more so in terms of feeling bonded and connected.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And those feelings that we get of gratitude when we pray and thank God, those feelings of gratitude, when we induce them in my lab for any reason, make people more willing to help one another, more generous, more fair, more kind. And so what religions have done is found a way to alter our emotional states, what the brain is perceiving, et cetera, in ways that kind of bring out our better angels.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
That's an open question. You might be able to, but people will create rituals all the time just on their own. Why don't those rituals have the same effect or why doesn't being in a club have the same effect on connection? It's because over millennia, these rituals have been honed to nudge our bodies in certain ways. They're not just put together in ways that are random.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Let me give you one great example. One of my favorite examples is things like grieving. When someone dies and we face loss, grief is a very difficult emotion for people to feel, and many people get stuck in it. The trick is to move through it without it becoming too intense or going on too long. One thing that religions do is we all come together to eulogize a person.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And it seems normal, but if you think about it, it's kind of weird. Like if my wife just left me who I love or I lost a job that I love, I wouldn't want to spend time thinking about it and saying how great she was or the job was because it would make the pain even worse.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
But what we know from recent psychological research is that actually focusing on the person you've lost and consolidating a positive memory of them is one of the best predictors of moving through grief. And all religions help us do this. The ritual of Shiva in Judaism incorporates lots of elements.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
When someone dies, people come to your house for seven days in groups, and they say prayers together called minyans. Saying those prayers together creates that synchrony, and it increases feelings of empathy and connection. They cover mirrors in their houses. Why do they do this?
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Well, one thing we know from scientific research is when you look in a mirror, whatever emotion you're feeling becomes intensified. And so if you're feeling grief and you look in a mirror, you're going to feel it even more. And so sure, there's a theological reason for this, but what it's really doing is a slight way to reduce the grief that people are feeling.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
And so whether or not there has to be a God, we don't know. But what we do know is that there's a wisdom to these rituals that have been honed over time to work on our bodies physiologically and psychologically.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
So there hasn't been an empirical test of that, as you said. What we do know from certain studies is that some of it, especially the things that affect you physiologically, you can garner the benefit. So for example, when people pray the rosary or when they meditate or when Hindus chant Kirtan, it slows down the breathing rate.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
When the breathing rate slows down, it's a signal to the brain that the world around you is safe, it reduces anxiety, it calms people down. So things like that, I think you can get the benefit without belief. Or things like, you know, sitting Shiva, people come together and maybe they sing together but not saying Jewish prayers. You would get similar benefits.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
But in some areas, belief certainly does matter. People who have a greater belief tend to have less stress and less anxiety in life, especially around issues of death. So I think there is clearly some benefit that can come without belief, but in each case, we kind of have to examine the phenomenon we're talking about. And I don't want to diminish belief. Belief certainly plays a role.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
But there are some benefits that can be extracted from these rituals in respectful ways where belief isn't necessary.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
For a lot of people, and we're seeing this in our society right now, people are leaving traditional religions in droves, I think, because they don't agree with the policies of them, or there have certainly been institutional failings in the Catholic churches and others. But most of the people who are leaving religion... aren't becoming atheists.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
They are checking the box that is spiritual, but not religious. That is, they're looking for that element in life, that connection to something greater, those benefits that spirituality brings, but they're trying to find a new way of doing it. And often in midlife, there is an uptick for people. Often when people turn in around 50, 55,
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
Actually, if you look at people taking up meditation, the people who are doing it most rapidly are people in that age bracket. I think it's because you're at that stage in life where you're not at the end, but you can see the end, and it feels a little more real, and you're getting a little older, and you're trying to reevaluate. And some people do convert at that time.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
So I think there is a spiritual hunger for people. It's trying to find the thing that fits your needs, right?
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
That is true, again, but most of them aren't leaving to become atheists. Most of them are leaving because they disagree or they feel that that institution is not speaking to them. But again, this is why you're seeing increases in people taking up other types of faith. Buddhism is on the rise. People are going to things like Burning Man and having spiritual experiences.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
People are looking for new ways to get that when they feel that the traditional faiths aren't speaking to them or, you know, have institutional failings like child abuse or gender discrimination.
Something You Should Know
Scientific Benefits of Practicing Any Religion & What It’s Like to Live in Space - SYSK Choice
No, it doesn't. And I think that's why people are hungry and are looking for something different. And I think if you look at the sociological trends, the religious landscape is kind of in flux right now. Because you're right, if you're raised Catholic, it's hard to become Jewish and vice versa or whatever it might be. But it doesn't mean people don't want to fulfill that part of their life.