Row and Bee

Author notes

Limitations

Kilre

on Nov. 10, 2009

It's always bothered me that believers could claim that if they prayed, something would happen to the effect of vindicating their superstition. It's unfortunate that, in the cause and effect patterning of life, some people conflate talking to themselves and communicating with an immortal, omnipresent, force, that has the power to alter reality and answer their prayers.

Considering that the best example we have of the power of prayer, the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer, which I've linked to quite a lot, shows definitively that prayer has negligible to harmful effect on people (part of the wonder of the placebo effect is that it works both ways), there doesn't appear to be a positive correlation between praying–cause–and healing–effect.

Most other instance of answered prayer, like when the governors of Georgia and Alabama called on their god to end a drought and summon rain, ended up being answered…with an inch of rain the next day (which was forecast on the Weather Channel the day before anyway, and did nothing to help ease the strain on the area anyway, but the governor called it a victory for prayer), or answered in a vague way eventually.

I hate to break it to people, but if you're praying in the vain attempt to get an intercessory effect in your life, you are succumbing to superstition. There was a faulty cause and effect that happened in your life, that tricked your brain into thinking that what had happened was not just coincidence, but evidence of supernatural intervention.

From a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, v 38, pages 168-172:

To say that a reinforcement is contingent upon a response may mean nothing more than that it follows the response. It may follow because of some mechanical connection or because of the mediation of another organism; but conditioning takes place presumably because of the temporal relation only, expressed in terms of the order and proximity of response and reinforcement. Whenever we present a state of affairs which is known to be reinforcing at a given drive, we must suppose that conditioning takes place, even though we have paid no attention to the behavior of the organism in making the presentation. A simple experiment demonstrates this to be the case….

If a clock is now arranged to present the food hopper at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior, operant conditioning usually takes place. In six out of eight cases the resulting responses were so clearly defined that two observers could agree perfectly in counting instances. One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return. The body generally followed the movement and a few steps might be taken when it was extensive. Another bird was conditioned to make incomplete pecking or brushing movements directed toward but not touching the floor. None of these responses appeared in any noticeable strength during adaptation to the cage or until the food hopper was periodically presented. In the remaining two cases, conditioned responses were not clearly marked.

The conditioning process is usually obvious. The bird happens to be executing some response as the hopper appears; as a result it tends to repeat this response. If the interval before the next presentation is not so great that extinction takes place, a second 'contingency' is probable. This strengthens the response still further and subsequent reinforcement becomes more probable. It is true that some responses go unreinforced and [p. 169] some reinforcements appear when the response has not just been made, but the net result is the development of a considerable state of strength.