Self Control and Belief in God
December 30, 2008 Findings For Good Self-Control, Try Getting Religious About It By JOHN TIERNEY NEW YORK TIMES ...In a new paper [in the upcoming issue of the Psychological Bulletin ], Miami psychologists surveyed the literature to test the proposition that religion gives people internal strength. “We simply asked if there was good evidence that people who are more religious have more self-control,” Dr. McCullough. “For a long time it wasn’t cool for social scientists to study religion, but some researchers were quietly chugging along for decades. When you add it all up, it turns out there are remarkably consistent findings that religiosity correlates with higher self-control.” As early as the 1920s, researchers found that students who spent more time in Sunday school did better at laboratory tests measuring their self-discipline. Subsequent studies showed that religiously devout children were rated relatively low in impulsiveness by both parents and teachers, and that religiosity rep