The Effects of Intercessory Prayer, Positive Visualization, and Expectancy
This is an interesting study investigating the effects of being prayed for or visualized for by someone else, as opposed to doing those things for oneself. The U. Mass team of Matthews, Conti and Sireci looked at the effects of intercessory prayer on 95 critically ill, end stage renal disease patients on dialysis. In the controlled, randomized study, clinical outcomes of prayed-for people were compared with those of visualized-for people.
In addition, the placebo effect was isolated, by teasing out who expected to be prayed for, and who expected to be visualized for from those who had no such expectations. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of six groups and assessed for total well being on 20 different outcome measures. Those who expected to receive intercessory prayer reported feeling significantly better than did those who expected to receive positive visualization (F1.93 = 5.42; P < .02). No other statistically significant effects were found for either expectancy, intercessory prayer, or positive visualization on the remaining dependent measures. The study concludes that the effects of intercessory prayer and transpersonal positive visualization could not be distinguished from the effect of expectancy. Transpersonal prayer and visualization alone did not appear to have an impact.
https://www.hypnosisresearchinstitute.org/trackback.cfm?A56D6532-C09F-2A3B-F6807845C59C11CC
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