However, recent theories in embodied cognition are challenging that idea by showing how our body can color our cognitive processing.

A quick and dirty example can be seen when you ask someone how happy they currently are. Traditional theories might suggest that a person would make this kind of judgment by calculating the degree to which they have attained of particular goals that are deemed necessary for happiness or searching one’s memory and getting a general impression of how joy filled our experience has recently been. However, an embodied perspective has shown that something like holding a pencil in between your teeth (which artificially makes you smile) will be interpreted by your mind as a sign of current happiness and lead you think you are actually much happier currently than you might report if you were not holding a pencil in between your lips.

The same goes for other emotion and experience like love and attraction. They have done studies where an attractive female experimenter approaches men while they are at the center of crossing a tall bridge or at the end of crossing a bridge. When asked how attractive the female experimenter was, individuals who were approached by the female experiment at the center of the bridge think she is more attractive than individuals who were approached by her at the end of the bridge. Why is that? Well presumably individuals are misattributing the source of their arousal (e.g., fear) for feelings of attraction. In other words, the perception of certain emotions are constructed based on what cues your body is giving you. Our emotion judgments are “embodied.” Crossing a bridge makes your heart beat faster so if asked how attractive a women is while crossing a bridge, you are likely to search for mind and body for cues and come to the conclusion that, “Well… my heart is beating fast, this women must be really beautiful.”

Some of the more fascinating studies that have come out in recent years shows that your perception of how warm and cold people are can be influence (or primed) by whether you’re holding a hot drink versus a cold one. You also judge job candidates as more serious and committed if you read their resume on a heavy clipboard but less serious and less committed if your reading their resume on a light clipboard.

Clearly, cognitive processing is colored by what our body is currently doing and experiencing. Memory, emotions, and perceptions are do not share a one to one correspondence with what is really going on. Even complicated judgments and impressions can be influenced by our bodily actions whether or not we are aware of it.

This work has also been extended to various religious and moral domains as well. For instance, it has been shown that people are more likely to cheat when they are in dark room (vs. a well lit room) or when they are in a well lit room but are wearing dark sun glasses suggesting that darkness primes particular sinful behaviors. In a different line of work, it has been shown that working in a room with a disgusting smell can increase the severity of moral judgments. For instance, both liberal and conservative participants who are exposed to a fart smell have much more negative attitudes towards homosexual men. And the opposite is also true, washing your hands prior to reading some moral dilemmas (e.g., eating human flesh to avoid starvation) can make these dilemmas seem less morally wrong. In one study, experiments asked participants to recall an immoral act they had previously done. Soon after, they found that participants who recalled an immoral behavior they committed rated cleaning products as more favorable than non-cleaning products relative to those who recalled a neutral past behavior. In a follow up study, researchers again had participants recall a past immoral event and then asked one of group or participants to wash their hands while another group was told to simply sit quietly. They found that if giving the opportunity to make a charitable donation, those who did NOT wash their hands were more willing to donate some of their recently earned money than those who did wash their hands.  The idea being that those who had washed their hands had symbolically cleansed themselves of their previously remembered wrongdoings and hence, where no longer in a state of moral imbalance that threatened their concept of a moral self. Whereas, those who had not washed their hands felt a need to rectify their previous misgivings by doing something nice like giving money to charity.

This research area has fascinated me for years so I thought of bringing up several points that relate to this work.

First, this body of research controversially suggests that our moral judgments can be pushed around a bit by our current feelings of moral cleanliness. It is important to understand what this work can and cannot say. Many secular researchers take this research to suggest that moral judgments are simply a scaffolding of previous physiological visceral reactions. So according to them, eating human flesh is not morally wrong, it just physically disgusted us in the past and we ended up constructing a moral story behind it. Of course, this line of reasoning is circular and does not address why eating human flesh but not eating animal flesh might have aroused a physiological feeling of disgust in the first place.

Also, just because something that feels immoral is associated or even grounded within a physiological response like disgust does not provide sufficient evidence for its origin. Take a television signal for example. Imagine a classroom of 5 year olds who are trying to figure out where the pictures come from. Some think that the pictures are generated from the television itself while others think that the pictures exist outside of the television. One day, a child discovers that the television pictures are associated with an antenna such that, breaking the antenna prevents the pictures from appearing. This does not of course mean that the antenna (as a part of the TV) was creating the pictures itself, all it suggests is that the antenna was receiving the pictures from somewhere else. I bring up this point because social neuroscientist are publishing research studies every month showing how the concept of God is associated with this part of the brain, or a sense of the sacred is associated with this particular physiological response. While these kinds of conclusions represent faulty scientific reasoning, they nevertheless make an impact on the general audience because they are said to be “scientific.” Hence, as Christians, we need to critically think about the psychological arguments that are being made. Especially because many psychological results are interpreted by psychologists who are inherently motivated to see the world from a different lens. In fact, in a recent conference, a social psychologist presented research findings showing that over 90% of social psychologists identify themselves as liberal. I will leave this point alone for now because I would like to return to this point in the fourth part of this series.

On a more applied level, I think the research on moral cleansing brings up  a rout by which the devil can try to dissuade us from living a more sacrificial life by filling our minds with thoughts like, “why help a brother in need, you already did your good deed for the day.”   The opposite might also be true, the devil might try to fools us into thinking we are somehow morally justified by doing other symbols that can serve as moral tokens towards convincing us that we are righteous like  literally “washing our hands” of situations that require our love and attention the way Pilate did with Jesus. This idea of being in a state of “moral balance” seems to be very close to what most people consider a good moral life. In my attempts at conversational evangelization, I have often found it important to begin by questioning this moral balance premise that people can sometimes hold. It is important to remember that Christ calls us to actually be Holy and not simply have enough good deeds to outweigh the bad as is taught in other religions like Islam.

Biblically speaking, this research does of course bring to mind many of the aspects of the old testament like when God gave the Israelites not only the moral law to guide them to moral cleanliness and to becoming more like God but also a ceremonial laws which were meant to guide the Israelites into doing specific ceremonial actions like sacrifices and dietary restrictions as a means of keeping them in a physical states of purity. All of which were meant to prepare and foreshadow (or prime) the coming of Christ, and his continued requirement for holiness through a cleanliness of heart.

Although Christ has fulfilled the point of the ceremonial laws, I still think of the various high Church practices which guide how we should conduct our inner life through certain physical actions. For instance, in the Roman liturgy, people will make the sign of the cross over their forehead, their mouth and their heart prior to listening to the gospel.  These signs are meant to outwardly reaffirm our internal prayer of “May the Lord be on my mind, on my lips and in my heart.”

We also see these kinds of behaviors the various gestures that Christian children are taught when singing worship songs. These physical movements do more than simply serve external signs of what is going on inside, or make worship music fun and engaging, they also help us to process what is in our hearts with better fluency and prime particular concepts like holiness in the absence of feeling the sense of holiness. That is, the physical actions themselves make it easier for our minds to process praise and a call to sanctification through faith in Christ.

Thirdly, this work brings up a possible suggestion for how to grow in loving your fellow man. Many great thinkers, writers and men of faith have suggested that if you want to Love your neighbor, you should not spend all your time waiting for a dramatic sign from the Holy Spirit but go out and do it! Especially when you feel the least inclined to do so. Let the Holy Spirit shape your heart by your willingness to Love despite the fact that you may not currently be feeling the emotional, financial, social or spiritual motivational to do so. As Christ so wonderfully put it, “If you love only those who love you, what reward will you have?”

This third point leads well into a possibly understanding what Saint Paul may have meant by “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). Just as psychologist are  growing in their  understanding of mental processes by situating them within body, so too might we learn to grow in living out our faith by situating it in works of love and understanding the various ways our bodily actions can influence our life of worship.

There are obvious advantages to choosing intelligence. You would have an enhanced ability to apply your knowledge towards solving novel problems, be able to integrate multiple pieces of information and see clarity and order where others saw chaos. If you worked hard enough, you would definitely be able to secure a nice job for yourself and make good money.

But what would self control get you besides a better ability to regulate your behavior? Well, apparently, self control can get you much, much more according to various psychological studies. Self control can be defined as the ability to delay a current goal for the attainment of some future reward. Multiple studies suggest that individuals with greater self control show enhanced life satisfaction, report experiencing greater happiness, closer relationships, and emotional intimacy and even excel in school studies. In fact, when you pit self control against intelligence, self control is actually a much better predictor of a number of positive psychological and educational outcomes.

Let me give you an example of a study examining self control. One aspect of self control is the ability to delay gratification (think: the ability to avoid temptation). In one famous study, children were brought into a room with a marshmallow on a table and told that they could eat the marshmallow whenever they wanted. However, if they could avoid eating the marshmallow for 5 minutes, then when the experimenter returned, they would get a second marshmallow. Simple study right? Their results showed that the amount of time that children waited was an incredibly strong predictor of life satisfaction, legal problems and social competence. In fact, children who were able to wait the full 5 minutes versus those who ate the marshmallow within 30 seconds scored almost 200 points higher on the SAT.

I think these results are startling as they help us understand why self control is indeed a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Also, it highlights the need to perhaps place an emphasis on raising children who can learn to deny themselves rather than raising baby Einsteins.

Interestingly, the ability to deny oneself is one of the qualities which characterize Christians and other religions in general. So one question researchers wanted to ask was whether religiosity was associated with greater self control. Well according to one meta-analysis that combines the results of several studies, it was found that those who reported higher religiosity (in terms of Bible reading and church attendance) showed higher self control. Interestingly, the authors of the meta-analysis went on to ask whether this relationship is limited to the religious or to those who characterize themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” But they actually found that the more individuals defined themselves as spiritual but not religious the less self control they exhibited.

When I first came across this result, I couldn’t help but secretly chuckle as it supported the notion that “spiritualist” will deny religion simply to justify their own desires. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that it brings up an interesting question of whether religion trains individuals to develop better self control, or are people with higher self control generally better able to keep the faith?

It is certainly true that we can strengthen our ability to control ourselves by practicing daily acts of self regulation. And this is exactly what we are called to do by the gospel. However, it is also true that some people have an easier time accepting the gospel because they are endowed with the gift of self control.

Anyway, I thought I would bring some of this research to your attention and would love to hear what you guys have think of this work.

One line of research that has recently gotten a lot of attention deals with what are called “lay theories of intelligence.” This is not a theory on what intelligence is as much as a theory about what people think intelligence is and how it shapes their behavior.

Essentially the theory states that people typically hold either an incremental or entity view. People holding an incremental view say that intelligence is malleable and changes across life time. These people believe that intelligence is like a muscle that if you work hard, you can increase it. Hence, incremental theorists typically exert greater effort across task even if they initially struggle with them and place a greater emphasis in mastery. By contrast, there are people who hold an entity theory of intelligence which is a belief that intelligence is fixed and stable. Entity theorists would endorse the view that “You’re either smart or your not. If you happen to be one who isn’t smart, too bad, there’s nothing you can do about it.” As a consequence, people holding an entity view of intelligence may disengage from difficult tasks since they feel that their difficulty is a sign that they are just not intelligent enough. Several research studies have supported the predictions made by this theory showing, for example, that children as young as 7 begin to endorse one of the two theories, and it can greatly affect how they view academic struggles and influence their goal persistence.

Additionally, it has been found that one of the ways that children develop one of these theories is by the type of praise that they are given. Process praise, such as “Wow… I see you’re working hard, since your doing so well,” encourages children to take an incremental view and persist even after initial failures. Whereas ability praise, such as, “Wow… you’re really smart, no wonder your doing so well,” encourages children to take an entity view, which keeps them motivated if they succeed on a task. However, if they fail at the task, they typically stop trying in subsequent attempts.

Interestingly, it has also been found that people who hold an entity versus incremental theory of intelligence will usually also hold an entity theory of personality as well, meaning that they will view personality as a fixed variable which leads them to judge people on a limited amount of information. Say, for example, a guy in one of your classes responds rudely to you after requesting a pencil. An entity theorist might come to the conclusion that this guy is just a jerk, whereas an incremental theorist that might posit that the guy is just having a bad day.

Therefore, consider this question: How you think our view of intelligence might shape how we live out our faith in terms of how we view salvation, our efforts to persist in the face of trials against sin, and how we view other Christians who struggle with sin? What do you all think about this?

Of course, many of the students I have spoken to believe the straightforward doctrine that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that we are saved by placing our faith in him. But if I probe a little further, I have noticed a very common response from younger UBF members: “That stuff isn’t important to us.” Here I am talking about nontrivial questions such as, “Can we lose our salvation? Is there such a thing as purgatory? What happens to people who die but never know Jesus — will they be saved?”

I don’t think this is true of all UBF members. I have met with some older missionaries who certainly hold affirmative views on some of these questions. I know this because I have gotten into some fiery discussions with some of them. I also sense that many people do have a positions on these issues but they don’t bother to express them because they would be preaching to a choir (no pun intended). But how can some of the younger UBF members not be interested in taking stances on some of these doctrinal questions? I am not talking about students who have recently accepted Christ or who have just started studying the Bible. I am talking about people who grew up in the UBF community who have studied the Bible for years. Isn’t doctrine important in at some point in missionary work? After sheep accept Jesus Christ, don’t we at some point need to start feeding them solid food?

Doctrine can determine the kind of attitude people take towards developing and maintaining their faith life. The purpose of doctrine then is not to create a sort of tool of social conformity to filter out those who do not believe the same way we do, but instead to give us proper direction in living life.

I suppose one way of looking at the matter is that doctrine will only get in the way of affirming every day the fundamental reality that Jesus Christ died for us so that we might have life to the full. After all, even meditation on that doctrine alone is enough to change lives and keep us well fed until the day we meet our Savior. I can also see how some people might feel that doctrine can slow down the discipleship process, because some new members may get turned off by certain doctrines and may not want to continue their otherwise valuable Bible study.

But it seems to me that, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are affirming doctrine all the time: Jesus Christ is Lord. There are such places as heaven and hell. The Bible is the inerrant word of God. Shouldn’t we be willing to venture beyond these to other questions that may be important in our lives of faith?

Of course, “Do dogs go to heaven?” is not one of these.