Socio-cultural Differences in Judgments about the Power of Thought.

We examined participants’ (N = 145) beliefs in the power of thought by comparing their judgments about whether desires would be fulfilled through prayer or through another petitionary activity – wishing. Three groups of adults (theists, agnostics, and atheists) read scenarios in which a protagonist desires to assist another person and either ‘wishes’ or ‘prays to God’ for their desires to be fulfilled. Requests varied by domain (psychological, biological, physical outcomes) and by plausibility (ordinarily plausible versus impossible outcomes). Participants reported whether each request would be fulfilled. Overall, participants judged that requests for plausible phenomena would be fulfilled more often than requests for impossible phenomena. Atheists were similar to theists and agnostics in belief that wishes would be fulfilled, perhaps suggesting that all groups appealed somewhat to metaphysical causality. However, agnostics, and especially atheists, were less likely than theists to report that prayers would be fulfilled. Engagement in prayer activities was a particularly strong predictor of participants’ belief in the power of prayer but was unrelated to their belief in the power of wishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]