How to Benefit From Religion, Even as a Nonbeliever | David DeSteno
Dr. David DeSteno, a Northeastern University psychology professor, discusses "religio-prospecting"—scientifically studying ancient religious practices like sitting Shiva, gratitude, and Shinto rituals for their benefits, whether one is a believer or not. He explores what practices work and why, seeking the "next mindfulness."
Deep Dive Analysis
11 Topic Outline
Introduction to Religio-Prospecting and its Purpose
Scientific Approach to Religious Practices vs. Theology
Addressing Criticisms of Studying Religion Scientifically
Scientific Benefits of the Jewish Practice of Sitting Shiva
Understanding Motor Synchrony and its Impact on Connection
The Role of Gratitude in Promoting Ethical Behavior
Rites of Passage: Lessons from the Apache Sunrise Ceremony
Japanese Shinto Rituals and Parent-Child Bonding
The 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' and Cultivating Affection
Meditation, Transcendental States, and Psychedelics
The Benefits of Belief in a Higher Power and Afterlife
8 Key Concepts
Religio-prospecting
A scientific project that examines ancient religious practices to discover their benefits, regardless of belief, similar to how pharmaceutical companies bioprospect for cures. It aims to find the 'next mindfulness' by studying what practices work and why, without defending religion as an institution.
Instrumental Support
A form of support characterized by individuals showing up in person to provide practical help and aid during times of need, rather than just offering social connection. It is identified as a major predictor of resilience when facing grief and mourning.
Motor Synchrony
The phenomenon of people moving together in time, which has been experimentally shown to make individuals feel closer, more similar, and significantly more compassionate towards one another. This simple act of coordinated movement can triple the willingness to help a stranger.
Amai (Japanese Emotion)
A unique Japanese emotion describing the cherishing feeling one has for someone, often a child, akin to the feeling of putting down work to read a story to a toddler. It signifies an increased reverence and deep value for children in Japanese culture, reinforced by rituals.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
An economic term referring to the irrational tendency to continue an endeavor or relationship because of invested time, money, or effort, even if it's no longer beneficial. While often irrational in economic decisions, the principle that effort creates affection applies positively to strengthening relationships.
Right-handed vs. Left-handed Techniques
A categorization of methods to achieve transcendental states. Right-handed techniques, like meditation, are slower, fit within traditional religions, and require years of practice. Left-handed techniques, such as psilocybin or ayahuasca, are rapid but can be risky without proper ritualistic scaffolding like chanting.
Ego Death
A psychological experience, often associated with transcendental states induced by meditation or psychedelics, where one's sense of individual identity melts away. This experience can be blissful or terrifying, with rituals providing scaffolding to ensure a positive outcome.
Decision Fatigue
The mental exhaustion and reduced ability to make good decisions after a prolonged period of making choices. Belief in a higher power can reduce anxiety related to decision-making by alleviating the perceived burden of optimizing every choice, leading to reduced daily anxiety.
9 Questions Answered
Religio-prospecting is a scientific project to examine ancient religious practices for their benefits, regardless of belief. It's important because many traditional practices offer scientifically verifiable advantages for human well-being, similar to how bioprospecting finds medicinal cures.
Yes, many benefits of religious practices can be separated from theological belief. Practices often leverage mechanisms of the mind and body that can improve well-being independently of faith.
Sitting Shiva helps mourners by providing instrumental support through mandatory community visits, encouraging positive memory consolidation, reducing self-focus by covering mirrors, and mitigating rumination through mild physical discomfort from low seating.
Synchronized movement, or motor synchrony, makes people feel closer, more similar, and increases their compassion and willingness to help one another, even strangers, by creating a sense of shared experience.
Cultivating gratitude makes people more honest, equitable, generous, and willing to help others. It acts as a daily boost to ethical behavior, whether expressed through religious prayers or secular practices like gratitude journaling.
These ceremonies often involve enduring grueling challenges that demonstrate self-control and competence, proving to both the individual and the community that they are ready for adult responsibilities. The community's recognition and increased responsibilities are crucial for the transition.
These rituals, involving multiple ceremonies and significant investment of time and resources, publicly validate the child's value. This repeated act of caring reinforces to the parents' minds how important their children are, strengthening the bond.
Right-handed techniques, like meditation, are slower, require years of practice, and fit within traditional religions. Left-handed techniques, such as psilocybin or ayahuasca, are rapid but can be risky, with rituals like chanting providing scaffolding to ensure a blissful rather than terrifying experience.
Belief in a higher power can reduce decision fatigue and anxiety around major life choices (health, career) by alleviating the perceived burden of optimizing every decision. Belief in an afterlife can significantly reduce anxiety as individuals approach death.
18 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Daily Gratitude
Practice daily gratitude, such as giving thanks before meals, upon waking, or using a gratitude journal. This acts as a daily boost, dramatically increasing honesty, generosity, and kindness in your behavior.
2. Invest in Relationships Actively
Systematically invest time, effort, and resources into relationships you wish to strengthen, treating the act of caring as a way to deepen affection. The act of caring and investing reinforces the value you place on the relationship, fostering deeper affection and connection.
3. Reduce Decision Anxiety
Cultivate a belief in a higher power or a mindset that things will generally work out, accepting that you don’t need to optimize every decision. This approach reduces decision fatigue and anxiety associated with making choices in various life areas, leading to overall reduced daily anxiety.
4. Practice Compassionate Meditation
Engage in meditation with the explicit intention of cultivating compassion and kindness towards yourself and others. The core purpose of meditation is to reduce suffering and has been shown to make people more compassionate and kinder.
5. Seek Instrumental Grief Support
During mourning, actively seek out and accept instrumental support from people who are physically present and offer practical help. Instrumental support, characterized by in-person presence and practical assistance, is a major predictor of resilience in the face of grief.
6. Consolidate Positive Grief Memories
Actively recall, share, and consolidate positive memories of a deceased person during mourning. This practice is a major predictor of resilience and helps individuals move through grief more effectively.
7. Engage in Synchronous Movement
Participate in synchronous movements with others, such as swaying, tapping in unison, or taking deep breaths together. This simple act fosters feelings of closeness, increases compassion, and enhances willingness to help one another.
8. Create Parent-Child Bonding Rituals
Establish daily, secular rituals with your children, such as giving massages, reading aloud, or snuggling together. These consistent acts of care reinforce the child’s importance and value, strengthening the parent-child bond, especially when bonding is challenging.
9. Lessen Self-Focus in Distress
During times of intense negative emotion, consciously reduce self-focus and avoid activities that intensify self-awareness, such as looking in mirrors. Self-focus tends to intensify emotions, particularly grief and anxiety, so reducing it can help manage these feelings.
10. Introduce Mild Discomfort for Rumination
When experiencing rumination or depression, introduce mild physical discomfort, such as sitting in an unergonomic or low position. Research suggests that mild onsets and offsets of pain or discomfort can help reduce rumination and depression.
11. Signal Mourning to Others
Wear an external sign of mourning, such as a black ribbon, to indicate your emotional state to those you encounter. This helps others understand your emotional state, allowing them to approach you with appropriate sensitivity and respect.
12. Let Mourners Guide Interactions
When visiting mourners, wait for them to initiate conversation and allow them to set the emotional tone of the interaction. This approach respects their emotional state, eases the interaction, and avoids putting pressure on them to conform to expectations.
13. Consider Iterative Rites of Passage
For societal or family contexts, consider creating multiple, iterative rites of passage for significant accomplishments (e.g., college entry, first job). These ceremonies, which require demonstrations of self-control and competence, can encourage individuals to take on adult responsibilities and help the community recognize their evolving roles.
14. Use METTA for Self-Compassion
During loving-kindness (Metta) meditation, when directing wishes of happiness to yourself, generate the felt sense of profound joy or affection, such as from hugging a loved one. This technique can intensify the experience of happiness and self-compassion within the practice.
15. Approach Psychedelics with Scaffolding
If considering psychedelic experiences, ensure they are undertaken with trained individuals who provide ritualistic scaffolding, such as chanting and prayers. Rituals and guidance help create a safe and blissful transcendental experience, mitigating the risks of a terrifying trip.
16. Consider Belief in Afterlife
Reflect on and potentially adopt a belief in an afterlife. This belief can significantly reduce anxiety about death, especially as one ages, without any apparent downside.
17. Adopt Religio-Prospecting Mindset
Approach traditional spiritual practices with a scientific, non-theological lens to identify beneficial practices. This method allows for the discovery and adaptation of ancient wisdom that can improve life, similar to how meditation has been adopted secularly.
18. Try New Meditation App
Sign up for the 14-day free trial of the new ‘10% with Dan Harris’ meditation app at DanHarris.com. This grants access to a library of guided meditations, live community sessions, and ad-free podcast episodes.
6 Key Quotes
My goal is not to defend religion as an institution, but to look at what they have discovered that can make life better for people and to study it scientifically and see how we can use that.
David DeSteno
If science ever proves that reincarnation doesn't exist, then we'll have to give it up, but I'm not holding my breath.
Dalai Lama (quoted by David DeSteno)
If you take something like mindfulness... out of its ethical context, and place it in the mind of a C-suite executive at a company whose business practices are harmful... all you're doing is making better, more focused, bad actors, as opposed to helping the world.
Dan Harris
Sometimes we care for people because we love them, but sometimes we love them because we care for them.
Alison Gopnik (quoted by David DeSteno)
The chant's not just window dressing, right? The chanting and the prayers are there to kind of scaffold your experience so that it is an enjoyable one and not a frightening one.
David DeSteno
Given that there is no proof that a belief in the afterlife causes anyone any harm, why be adamant against it?
David DeSteno
3 Protocols
Sitting Shiva (Jewish Mourning Practice)
David DeSteno- Visit the mourners, as it is a mitzvah (sacred obligation).
- Bring food and provide instrumental support in any way possible.
- Ensure the mourners are never alone, with at least 10 people for minion prayers.
- Say prayers in unison, often swaying with each other, to foster connection.
- Cover mirrors to prevent the intensification of sad emotions.
- Sit on low, uncomfortable stools to induce mild discomfort, which reduces rumination and depression.
- Wear a torn garment (Kriya) or a torn ribbon as a public sign of mourning.
- Avoid wearing best clothes, bathing, shaving, or primping to lessen self-focus.
- Wait for the mourner to speak first and let them set the tone of the conversation.
Shinto Child-Caretaking Rituals (Japanese)
David DeSteno- During pregnancy, family ties a sash around the pregnant belly as a sign of care and protection.
- A ceremony is held when the child is born.
- A ceremony is held when the child's name is announced.
- A blessing ceremony takes place at Shinto temples a couple of months after birth.
- A ceremony is held on the child's first birthday.
- Multiple ceremonies are held during the child's earlier years of life.
Secular Child-Bonding Rituals (Pediatrician Recommended)
David DeSteno (describing pediatricians' recommendations)- Set a time every day to give the baby a massage.
- Set a time every day to sit down and read to your child.
- Set a time every day to snuggle together.