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Does faith improve performance? | Nudge Newsletter

Published about 6 hours ago • 2 min read

The Faith Effect

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Watch an England football match and you'll see a lot of praying.

How many players are religious? Well, the evidence is thin.

The Telegraph¹ confirms that at least four players are openly Christian.

And Woman Alive² (a slightly less reputable source) claims as many as 50% of the team follow a god—higher than the UK average.

Regardless of the true number, if you watch England, you'll see a lot of praying. Far more than you'd typically see in most normal professions (I'm yet to see my accountant praise the holy spirit for filing my tax return).

But could this faith actually help the players?

That's what Nir Eyal explores in his latest book, Beyond Belief.

Does Faith Help?

Back in 2005, 84 college students³ prepared for a simple but painful task: place a hand in icy water and keep it there until the pain became unbearable.

Weeks earlier, each student had been trained in one of three coping methods.

  • Group one practised physical relaxation.
  • Another repeated secular phrase like “I am content” or “I am joyful".
  • The third used spiritual phrases such as “God is peace", “God is joy", or “God is love", with substitutes like “Mother Earth” or “the universe” allowed for the faithless.

All 84 participants practised daily for two weeks.

On test day, each repeated their technique for 20 minutes, then submerged their hand in the icy bath while researchers recorded their reactions.

The results were clear.

The spiritual group kept their hands in the water nearly twice as long as the others.

All groups reported similar pain levels, but those repeating spiritually meaningful phrases showed greater endurance and reported feeling calmer, less anxious, and happier.

Even participants who replaced “God” with personally meaningful terms experienced the same benefits.

Faith, due to whatever reason (placebo or otherwise), seems to improve performance.

Perhaps England manager Thomas Tuchel should pick players on their prayers, not penalties.

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I hope you enjoyed today's newsletter.

​Phill​

¹Morgan, T. (2024, July 12). ‘God has my back on the pitch’: How Christianity is helping England’s Euro 2024 ‘God squad’ including Saka, Guehi, Toney and Eze. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/07/12/england-euro-2024-god-squad-saka-guehi-toney-eze/

²Windle, L. (2022, November 29). I Googled all 26 members of the World Cup England squad to find out if they were Christians and here's what I learned. Woman Alive. https://www.womanalive.co.uk/opinion/i-googled-all-26-members-of-the-world-cup-england-squad-to-find-out-if-they-were-christians-and-heres-what-i-learned/14385.article

³Wachholtz, A. B., & Pargament, K. I. (2005). Is spirituality a critical ingredient of meditation? Comparing the effects of spiritual meditation, secular meditation, and relaxation on spiritual, psychological, cardiac, and pain outcomes. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 28(4), 369–384.

As a behavioural science practitioner, I believe in the peak-end rule.

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Nudge Newsletter

Phill Agnew

I spend 18 hours each week turning marketing psychology into readable newsletters.

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