Science & Spirituality

Effects of Prayer

• The neuroscience of prayer: It’s a brain puzzle. “Talking to God is not really different from talking to one’s friends and neighbors.” Uffe Schjødt for The European, May 2012
• Your Brain on Prayer. “The experience is at least neurologically real.” Episode of Through the Wormhole on Discovery TV’s Science Channel, October 2013
• Study: Prayer can help people handle difficult emotions. “Those who were boiling with anger said they found ‘a readily available listening ear.'” Science Daily, December 2010
• Prayer may re-shape your brain…and your reality.  Barbara Bradley Hagerty for NPR’s All Things Considered, May 2009
• Study: Prayer increases forgiveness. Science Daily, February 2010

Happiness & Spirituality

• Report: Money can buy happiness, to a point. Randolph Schmid for the Associated Press, September 2010
• Study: Couples who share religious practices tend to be happier than those who don’t. “True to the aphorism, couples who pray together stay together.” Donna St. George for The Washington Post, August 2010
• How faith can affect therapy. Ashley Taylor for The New York Times, July 2013
• Book: How will you measure your life? “If you give in to ‘just this once,’ based on a marginal-cost analysis, you’ll regret where you end up.” Excerpt from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s book, May 2012
• As we become richer, do we become stingier? Shankar Vedantam for NPR’s All Things Considered, September 2013

Alcohol & Drugs

• No Amount of Alcohol is Safe. “‘Responsible drinking’ has become a 21st-century mantra for how most people view alcohol consumption. But when it comes to cancer, no amount of alcohol is safe.” Laura A. Stokowski for Medscape Oncology, April 2014 based on the 2014 World Cancer Report

Questioning Atheism

• Questioning the Questioners. “Atheists celebrate scientific rationality. But even the most thorough experiment cannot resolve all mysteries about human existence.” Wolfgang Huber for The European, June 2013

• The Scientific Atheism Fallacy. “Without proof, should a scientist be an atheist?” Nicholas Kardaras for Psychology Today, June 2011

Effects of Facebook

• Facebook is bad for you. Using the social network seems to make people more miserable. The Economist, August 2013
• Cheating, Breakup, and Divorce: Is Facebook Use to Blame? Russell Clayton, Alexander Nagurney, and Jessica Smith for Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, June 2013
• Comparing the Happiness Effects of Real and On-line Friends.  John Helliwell and Haifang Huang for The National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2013
• Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness? Fenne große Deters and Matthias Mehl for Social Psychological and Personality Science, December 2012
• The Pathway Between Facebook Interaction and Psychological Distress. Wenhong Chen and Kye-Hyoung Lee for Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking,June 2013
• Feeling Better But Doing Worse: Effects of Facebook Self-Presentation on Implicit Self-Esteem and Cognitive Task Performance. Catalina Toma for Media Psychology, May 2013
• Exploring Social Network Site Use and Perceptions of Social Support, Stress, and Well-Being. Robin Nabi, Abby Prestin and Jiyeon So for Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, June 2013
• Facebook Makes Us Sadder And Less Satisfied, Study Finds. Elise Hu for NPR, August 2013

Homosexuality

• Study: Scientists may have found a biological basis for homosexuality. “What if in some cases sexuality is caused by an identifiable chemical process in the womb? What if, in other words, homosexuality can potentially be prevented?” Mark Joseph Stern for Slate, June 2013

Effects of Dating

• Dating Trajectories From Middle to High School: Association With Academic Performance and Drug Use. Pamela Orpinas, Arthur Horne, Xiao Song, Patricia Reeves and Hsien-Lin Hsieh for the Journal of Research on Adolescence, February 2013

Marriage

• The Things You Do for Me: Perceptions of a Romantic Partner’s Investments Promote Gratitude and Commitment. Samantha Joel for the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, July 2013

• On the causes and consequences of divorce. Alessandro Balestrino, Cinzia Ciardi and Claudio Mammini for The Journal of Socio-Economics, August 2013
• Divorce and changes in the prevalence of psychotropic medication use. Nina Metsa-Simola and Pekka Martikainen for Social Science and Medicine, October 2013

In Defense of Cousin Marriages

• Go ahead, kiss your cousin. Heck, marry her if you want to. “Intermarriage decreases the divorce rate and enhances the independence of wives, who retain the support of familiar friends and relatives.” Richard Conniff for Discover Magazine, August 2003

Scientists Speak On Spirituality

• Carl Sagan on spirituality. “The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Maria Popova for Brain Pickings, June 2013
• Religion and science can co-exist, scientists say.  Jaweed Kaleem for HuffPost Religion, September 2011
• Book: The Language of God. “…for me the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.” Excerpt from the 2006 memoir of geneticist Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health
• Ann Druyen talks about science, religion, wonder, awe..and Carl Sagan. “Science is nothing more than a never-ending search for truth. What could be more profoundly sacred than that?” Ann Druyen, Carl Sagan’s widow and cowriter, for The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, November/December 2003

Effects of Pornography

Links below may contain some graphic sexual language. Please use your sound judgement and discretion while using these resources.

• Your Brain On Porn. “Evolution has not prepared your brain for today’s Internet porn.” Gary Wilson’s ongoing curated blog
  
• The Demise of Guys? “The problem is they now prefer the asynchronistic Internet world to the spontaneous interaction in social relationships.” Philip Zimbardo for TED, March 2011
• The Great Porn Experiment. “Arousal addiction sympoms are easily mistaken for such things as ADHD, social anxiety, depression, concentration problems, performance anxiety, OCD and a host of others.” Gary Wilson for TEDxGlasgow, May 2012

Other

• The Evolution of the God Gene. Nicholas Wade for The New York Times, November 2009
• The Power (And Peril) of Praising Your Kids. Po Bronson for New York Magazine, August 2007
• Cool at 13, Adrift at 23. Jan Hoffman for the New York Times, June 2014