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November 25, 2007

"Psalms for Safety"

I'm can't remember who or what led me to this abnormally interesting paper, "Psalms for Safety: Magico-Religious Responses to Threats of Terror," by Richard Sosis. I was finally able to get hold of Sosis' paper today. It appears in the current, December 2007, issue of Current Anthropology. How current can one be? Here is the abstract:

Examination of the extent to which women in the northern Israeli town of Tzfat recited psalms to cope with the stress of the Second Palestinian Intifada reveals that knowing someone who was killed in the Intifada, experiencing an income loss, and believing that Tzfat would be attacked by terrorists were strong predictors of psalm recitation among self-identified secular but not religious interviewees. Among secular interviewees who believed that Tzfat would be attacked, psalm recitation was negatively correlated with short- and long-term precautionary behavioral strategies such as caution after an attack and avoiding buses, restaurants, and large crowds. No such relationship was found among religious interviewees, although they were less likely to make precautionary behavioral changes. These findings underscore the importance of magico-religious practices as coping mechanisms that may reduce anxiety and provide perceptions of control under conditions of high stress and uncertainty.

Sosis seeks to fill what he sees as a gap in the literature regarding the relationship between religion and terrorism: i.e. how religion responses to terrorism. He chose to study women in Tzfat, Israel, because there was a constant threat of attack during the Intifada and because Tzfat is recognized as the home of Jewish mysticism but still has a significant number of secular residents. As it turned out, Tzfat was never actually attacked. Various previous studies and the belief that Jewish women have a broader range of allowable responses than men do drove his focus on women. 367 women were interview over a six month period in 2003 with no interviews conducted within 48 hours of a fatal terrorist attach anywhere in Israel.

The interviewees self identified as secular (15.3%), traditional (10.1%), religious (74.6%). Sosis worries that this may be a biased sample of Tzfat's demographics. He is not sure why. In each interview, participants were "asked to rate the statement 'Reciting psalms protects one from an attack.'" On a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 10, (strongly agree) "over 77% of the religious and over 35% of the secular chose 10." 83% of the religious women and 35.7% of the secular women reported that they recited psalms "specifically in response to the Intifada." I would note that the, to me, surprisingly high percentages of secular women who answered "10" and recited psalms seems to reinforce Daniel Dennett's concern about "belief in belief."

Sosis discusses two hypotheses with regard to the data collected. First, "religiosity has a strong affect on psalm recitation." The highest correlation between psalm recitation and various other factors was a "right-wing" political preference. However, other factors like knowing someone killed in the Intifada, decreased income, or believe that Tzfat would be attacked increased the likelihood of psalm recitation among the secular but had little impact among the religious interviewees.

Second, the survey sought to address a possible correlation between psalm recitation and other behavioral modifications in the face of Intifada. 51% of the interviewees reported that they had taken at least one of the suggested behavioral modifications like reduced bus riding. The correlations between psalm recitation and other behavioral modifications were extremely complex. Among the self-identified secular interviewees, those who did not recite psalms were more likely to take precautionary steps if they believed Tzfat would be attacked or if there had been a terrorist attack somewhere the previous day than those who recited psalms. There was no meaningful difference in taking precautionary steps among the psalm reciting and non-psalm reciting religious interviewees. The extent to which the religious took precautions was about the same as was that of the psalm reciting secularists. Here is how he illustrates this with regard to those who believe Tzfat will be attacked. The vertical axis is probability.

The charts that illustrate the behavioral change the day after a terrorist attack are about the same. There was a somewhat higher probability that the religious and the psalm reciting secularists would take precautionary actions.

One of the most interesting questions that Sosis asks is "If psalm recitation reduces stress and increases one's sense of control, why does it seem to be effective only among the secular?" He offers four possibilities summarized as follows,

1. The religious are more fatalistic
2. "Among the religious there may pressure to recite psalms" so women who do not feel stress will recite them anyway.
3. "The stress-reducing benefits that rituals offer face diminishing returns."
4. "The data presented . . . suffer phenotypic correlation problems."

Independent of Sosis' list of possibilities, his data do seem to indicate that religious rituals, in the face of terror, reduces stress in the secular interviewees more than in the religious interviewees. In fact, it appears to me that such rituals reduce stress to the point that secular interviewees who recited psalms no longer took precautions in the same way as those who did not recite psalms. My reaction to this is that in the face of real danger, reciting psalms is a bad thing, just as bad as having religious beliefs. That is if one wants to avoid the direct impact of the threat, it is a bad thing. But if reducing stress is the goal (and that too has survival benefits), reciting of psalms and participating in other religious rites may be a good thing.

I also wonder about the second conditional in Sosis' question: "If psalm recitation . . . increases one's sense of control . . ." While I see that his data are indicative of psalm reciting reducing stress, at least in the secular population, it's not so clear to me that it increases "one's sense of control." It rather appears to me that reducing stress and one's sense of control have a rather complex relationship. At the least, one can say that those secularists who did not recite psalms exercised more real control; they were more likely to take additional precautions. Somehow, it also appears to me that exercising control is one of the surest ways to increasing one's sense of control, which in turn reduces stress. But these too are empirical considerations. I may need to read a paper by Keinan, who, as far as I can tell from the abstract, finds that there is a somewhat different and closer relationship between the two. If anyone knows of another study on the relationship between reduced stress and one's since of control, please tell me about it.

One statement early on in Sosis' paper struck me, "In fact, some interviewees claimed that Tzfat benefited from divine protection owing to the number of tzaddikim (holy people) buried there." God looks after the living if there are sufficient numbers of properly religious dead thereabouts! Amazing!

If you are interested in the role of religion in society, Sosis' paper will be an abnormally interesting read.

Reference:

Posted by Duane Smith at November 25, 2007 8:45 PM | Read more on Religion |

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