The psychological role of music and attentional control for religious experiences in worship

Abstract

This study investigated the psychological dynamics during worship experiences under the influence of different music conditions. In total, 60 believers were recruited to participate in experiments where they were asked to engage in worship and to connect with God while continuously ranking how strongly they sensed the presence of the divine. After each condition, they were asked to rate how well they were able to focus on God during the worship procedure. Based on a previously published Feedback Loop Model that portrays global psychological mechanisms in worship, we deduced two hypotheses: (1) the ability to focus on God is positively associated with how strong the subjective religious experience becomes, and (2) the different musical conditions yield varying degrees in the intensity of the felt presence of God. Our statistical analyses on the current sample demonstrate that both alternative hypotheses can be accepted. For the latter thesis, two further assumptions were at play: (1) we speculated that religious worship songs were associated with stronger divine experiences than with secular ones, and (2) it was assumed that if they could worship to their own selection of songs, the experience would be more powerful than with the ones that were provided by the research team. Whereas upon our investigation the former assumption can be deemed correct, the latter shows a positive but insignificant association.