A LIFE IN PRAYER
IU researcher investigates the psychology of prayer
(Appearing in the Spring 2008 issue of IU Research & Creative Activity magazine)
Kevin Ladd has spent much of his life in prayer. As a clergyman-in-training at the Princeton Theological Seminary and later as a pastor in the United Methodist Church, he not only led an active prayer life but thought more and more about the nature of prayer. Soon, Ladd’s curiosity lead him toward academe.
“Within the Methodist Church tradition we talk about experiencing a calling . . . and over time it became clear to me that my calling was changing,” says Ladd, now an associate professor of psychology at IU South Bend.
“When I was working in local parishes there weren’t many people who got the same level of excitement out of a factor analytical structure. So it became clear that my intellectual interests coupled with my faith were taking me in a different direction.”
Ladd’s evolving path took him to the University of Denver, where he earned a Ph.D. in psychology, focusing on cognitive theories of prayer. What he was after, and what continues to drive his research today, are fundamental questions: What is prayer? What do people believe they’re doing when they pray?
In 2007, Ladd took a significant step toward finding answers. Thanks to a $735,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation—an independent philanthropy devoted to funding researcher in science, religion, and many other disciplines—Ladd will spend the next three years working to advance our understanding of the psychology of prayer.
Inward, Outward, Upward
Prayer is one of those nearly universal behaviors for which we have no common psychological definition, for several reasons. First, because although William James, G. Stanley Hall and other prominent founding figures of modern psychology took religion seriously, with the rise of behaviorism in the early 20th century, unobservable phenomena like emotions and prayer fell out of vogue as objects of study. It’s only recently, within the past several years, that religion has once again gained widespread interest among psychologists.
But still, what prayer means remains elusive. Depending on whom you ask, it can be a form of direct communication with the divine, a form of self-therapy, or simple self delusion. And there are probably as many kinds of prayers as there are people who pray. So it’s difficult to know what, exactly, we’re talking about when we talk about prayer from a psychological perspective.
(What is clear, at least in the United States, is that lots of people do it. According to a General Social Survey on “Frequency of Prayer,” nearly 90% of Americans pray on a more or less regular basis. A strong majority—nearly 60%--pray at least once a day. See the website of The Association of Religion Data Archives at www.thearda.com for more information.)
One way to solve the problem is to turn to theology. Over the centuries, Christian theologians have defined prayer according to a widely accepted three part structure. “Inward prayer,” is prayer aimed at oneself as a means of self reflection. “Outward prayer,” meanwhile, refers to prayers directed at others, such as praying for a sick friend or relative, or prayers connected to relationships more generally. Finally, “upward prayer” is prayer as a means of connecting with the divine.
In a paper published in 2006, Ladd and his colleague, Bernard Spilka, set out to examine these prayer types scientifically. “The categories have existed for a long time in theological literature, but lacking the kind of data we deal with in the social sciences,” Ladd says. “So we wondered if these categories make any difference in terms of how people actually pray?”
To find out, Ladd and Spilka interviewed more than 500 undergraduates at universities throughout the Midwest. What they found both validated the theological model of prayer and complicated how it plays out in the real world. “In some sense it fits pretty well . . . people pray in ways that you can see as loosely related to the inward, outward and upward schematic,” Ladd says. “But people don’t consciously, or even unconsciously, break prayer down into nice, clean categories. People like to mix, engaging different themes that emerge during the course of prayer.”
For example, you might begin praying with the intention of looking inward, but soon self examination takes an outward turn and encompasses the nature of your relationships with friends and family and with God. For most people, Ladd says, the categories inevitably become intermingled. “Like many things we do, prayer is a mixture of motivations and intentions. It’s not a unidimensional construct because people don’t typically pigeonhole what they’re doing. Prayer is ultimately an organic, dynamic process.”
Over the past few years, Ladd and his colleagues have gone a long way toward establishing a systematic, scientifically rigorous schema of prayer in its myriad forms. Some of the conclusions may seem obvious. Many psychologists now agree that prayer is, on some fundamental cognitive level, concerned with forming and maintaining connections with one’s sense of self, with others, and with God. Prayer is also understood as providing intellectual and spiritual structures through which to make sense of the world and one’s place in it. For instance, many religions have prayers of mourning meant to help mourners make sense of and attribute meaning to death and loss. Other examples abound.
Still, these general insights leave many questions unanswered. Why do people seek the kind of connection and structure that prayer can provide? What’s happening in the brain when we pray? How, exactly, does prayer influence our thoughts and ways of viewing and understanding the world?
Digital Cameras, Labyrinths and Mannequins
As a psychologist intent on demystifying the cognitive structures of prayer, Ladd is treading on largely uncharted territory. His research, he says is mainly concerned with laying down basic categories and definitions. His methods, however, are ingenious. Under the auspices of the Templeton Foundation grant, Ladd has designed as series of experiments that, if successful, could open entirely new paths of inquiry into the psychology of prayer.
The first experiment involves equipping test subjects with digital cameras, having them take pictures of things they consider to be spiritually important, and then asking them to provide captions. What Ladd and his colleagues want to test is the idea that when people focus on a specific kind of prayer, such as an inward, self-reflexive prayer, they may actually see the world in a different way. So someone praying about an internal concern may be prone to focus on small details in the outside world and take close up shots of flowers and other objects, Ladd says. Meanwhile, according to the hypothesis, others who are focused on the paradox of prayer—the notion that in order to gain control of your spiritual life you must recognize a higher power and, in doing so, in some sense relinquish control over your own life—might be more apt to take photos of nature juxtaposed with human architecture, such as the wall of a building grown over with ivy.
“If what we think is right and prayer actually does in part determine how people see the physical world, you could take the same mode of investigation and use if for conflict resolution among people of the same religion or for people of different religions,” Ladd says. “What happens if we say, here’s a way that people are seeing the world, now how about if you not walk in someone else’s shoes but see through some else’s spectacles? What happens if, through understanding their mode of prayer, you’re able to literally see what they see as important?”
A second line of inquiry involves the labyrinth—an ancient spiritual tool used to focus prayer. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth does not attempt to fool and confuse those who enter it. Instead, a labyrinth simply guides you in and along a single, winding path toward the center and then back out. Traditionally, worshippers pray on the way in toward the labyrinth’s center, pray again upon reaching the center, and pray on the way out—a system that dovetails nicely with the inner, upward and outward model.
What Ladd wants to determine is what worshippers take away from the labyrinth experience. He plans on testing three groups: one consisting of people directed to pray while navigating a labyrinth, another group told to pray while walking in a straight line covering a distance equal to that of the labyrinth’s circular path, and a third group instructed to simply wander around a room as they pray, not following any particular path. The point, Ladd says, is to inquire into the relationship between prayer and movement.
“People often think of prayer as a sedentary activity, but many people report prayer while shopping or raking leaves or walking the dog. We want to investigate how movement, specifically through the structure of a labyrinth, affects prayer, and how prayer affects how bodies physically move through space.”
Ladd’s third experiment is perhaps the strangest and most inventive. Participants will be ushered into rooms containing life-sized mannequins arranged in classic prayer poses. For example, you might enter a quiet room and behold a mannequin, clad in a hat or sweatband, sitting on a chair with head bowed and hands folded. You would then spend several minutes alone with the figure, observing it from all angles, and finally fill out a questionnaire asking you to express your thoughts about the mannequin as though it were a real person. Adding an interesting twist, participants will then take the mannequin’s place, assuming the same prayer position and wearing the figure’s hat or headband while prayer. After praying for several minutes, the researchers will interview the subject to see how closely their prayer experience resembles the experience they ascribed to the mannequin.
“We’re trying to get at what happens when people see others engaged in religious traditions because that often links back to stereotypes and prejudice. We want to see what triggers those stereotypes,” Ladd says.
Science and Religion
Ladd is now in the early stages of the Templeton Foundation research—work that will occupy him for the next several years. Outside of his academic work, Ladd is still active in the Methodist Church and still leads an active prayer life. As a scientist with a religious background and intimate knowledge of prayer, he is in a unique position to shed light on a central component of people’s sense of the spiritual. What too often hinders other scientists studying prayer, he says, is their lack of understanding of prayer’s most basic tenets. For instance, one of the hottest lines of research involves neuroimaging, where brain researchers use MRI and other imaging technologies to scan people’s brains while they pray.
“But those studies are often flawed because the scientist will tell the subject to recite the Lord’s prayer or the 23rd psalm, then tell them to stop praying, then tell them to pray again,” Ladd says. “That’s not how prayer works. It’s not something you turn on and off when you’re ordered to. So it’s hard to tell [with MRI studies] whether all you have is expensive artwork when you’re done.”
For truer results, Ladd says, psychologists must take prayer seriously. And to do that, scientists must first understand the fundamental components of prayer and of what people are doing when they pray. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, scientists must resist the temptation to rationalize prayer to conform with principles of scientific inquiry.
“Ultimately people are thinking of prayer as a way of relating to God, and that’s something that as a psychologist I can’t test,” Ladd says. “If I pray for my grandmother and my grandmother dies, then as a scientist I might have to say that the prayer had no effect. But from a theological perspective that would be a ludicrous interpretation. Because I would say, you engaged in prayer, you were there with your grandmother, so a lot took place even if she did die. So we don’t try to say whether prayer is a rational practice or not. We know that most Americans engage in prayer . . . so as psychologists we want to understand what they’re doing.”