The study conducted by McGregor, Nash, and Hirsh was based around the idea that religious conviction provided a level of certainty and relief from error, which allows those who are strong believers to ignore the inconsistencies that cause people anxiety. Their hypothesis stated that there was a neurophysiological reason for this decrease in anxious feelings, lying in the reduction of activity in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex.
What’s up the ACC?
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex or ACC is a part of the forebrain located at the frontal part of the cingulated cortex, which lies above the corpus callosum. The ACC is a part of a variety of autonomic functions including blood pressure and heart rate as well as some processes involved in language production and acquisition as we’ve read about in the most recent T. Deacon chapters. However in this study the focus lay on the role of the ACC in more rational cognitive processes such as reward and anticipation and their role in the generation of anxious feelings. Much of the ACCs involvement in error processing lies in its activity in comparing what the intended outcome of a situation is and the actual out come, the ACC responds to an error by aiding in the production of anxious feelings, which allow the subject to become both consciously and physically aware of the error.
The ACC is connected to the prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and motor system. It is thus connected to the general system for regulating and modifying behavior. This regulation occurs in reaction to various anxiety producing events such as “the omission of error, the detection of conflict, or the experience of uncertainty.” They believe this to be true because those who are deeply involved in religion have provided for themselves a set of predictive guidelines for the world and occurrences therein. Religions provide meaning systems and moral parameters that the practitioner may operate within they are essentially guides for action and the perception of the actions of others. Anxiety is often caused by a dissonance between the expected action or situation and what actually occurs, those who seriously practice religion however are given rules that “constrain thought and perception away from discrepant or erroneous predictions”, they are able to ignore that which does not fit the teachings of their religion. The conscious reinterpretation of out of the religious box events into preexisting convictions acts as a sort of natural anti-anxiety medication, deadening the ACCs alarm bell for errors.
Study #1
The first study used twenty-eight subjects who came from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and other religious backgrounds (including non-religious). The researchers had them complete scaled that measured their personality, need for cognitive closure, behavioral inhibition and activation, as well as on their religious zeal. The religious zeal scale, on which they focused, had items that ranged from “I aspire to live and act according to my religious beliefs” to “I would support a war that defended my religious beliefs”. The participants were given a Stroop test, which consisted of a series of color words, each presented in a color that either matched or mismatched the meaning of the word. They were asked to respond to each word by pressing a button that either matched the color of the word or the color the word represented.
To determine the ACC activity they measured event-related potential “which reflects the summation of the postsynaptic potentials of a large ensemble of synchronously active neurons” called the errorealted negativity or ERN. “The ERN is a sharp negative voltage deflection that typically peaks within 50 to 100 ms postresponse and reflects the preconscious monitoring of error, conflict, and uncertainty localized to the ACC “
The results showed that those who were more religiously zealous had less ERN activity, when an error was made the ACC did not react so strongly that they had a feeling of anxiety or any related emotion in making a mistake. They also found that the more zealous a participant was the less errors they made, they were more deliberate and careful in their answers. However the more zealous participants also answered questions faster suggesting a higher level of automatic thoughts, which allow them to answers quickly with more certainty.
Study #2
The second study consisted of twenty-two participants whose religious preferences were not recorded. They were asked to complete a scale on their belief in God as well as an IQ test and the Big Five inventory, which measures five broad categories of personality traits. They also completed a similar Stroop test.
The results of the second study revealed, just as in the first, that a stronger belief in God led to les ERN activity as well as less incorrect answers. Having belief in God is most certainly a less intense form of religious zeal, however this did not diminish the fact that the participants had less anxiety related activity in their ACC.
These results suggest that religious conviction provides a framework for understanding and behavioral activity in the world, thus acting as a buffer against the anxiety provoking situations as well as “minimizing the experience of error”.
Though these studies are based around religious constructs there is a strong possibility that conviction to any ideology could provide similar results.
Carter CS, Braver TS, Barch DM, Botvinick MM, Noll D, Cohen JD. Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the online monitoring of performance. Science 1998; 280: 747–9.
MacDonald, Angus W., et al. "Dissociating the Role of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal and Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Cognitive Control." Science 288.5472 (2000): 1835-8.
No comments:
Post a Comment