Psych Central News
Going to Synagogue Improves Happiness, Health
Baylor University researchers also found that individuals who regularly attended synagogue reported greater life satisfaction.
“These findings nicely reinforce the inherited Jewish folk wisdom that going to shul (synagogue) is ‘good for you,’” said Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D.
Commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being, Levin said.
As published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, one study reviewed 2010 data on 1,849 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the European Social Survey.
The other study, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, used 2009-10 data on 991 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the International Social Survey Program’s Religion III survey.
Researchers say the new results confirm findings from other studies of Jews in Israel and the U.S. conducted over the past few years.
Seven such studies have been published by Levin using data from a variety of national and global surveys.
All of the studies have identified facets of Jewish religious expression as among the most reliable predictors of measures of physical and mental health.
Source: Baylor University
Man praying photo by shutterstock.
Your Physical Environment May Influence Your Integrity
An expansive physical setting may be characterized by having a big desk to stretch out while doing work, or a large driver’s seat in an automobile.
Columbia Business School researchers believe body postures influence feelings of power and that these feelings can elicit dishonorable conduct such as stealing, cheating, and even traffic violations.
“In everyday working and living environments, our body postures are incidentally expanded and contracted by our surroundings — by the seats in our cars, the furniture in and around workspaces, even the hallways in our offices — and these environments directly influence the propensity of dishonest behavior in our everyday lives,” said doctoral student Andy Yap, a key author of the research.
The study states that while individuals may pay very little attention to ordinary and seemingly innocuous shifts in bodily posture, these subtle postural shifts can have tremendous impact on our thoughts, feelings and behavior.
Building on previous research that expansive postures can lead to a state of power, and power can lead to dishonest behavior, the study found that expanded, nonverbal postures forced upon individuals by their environments could influence decisions and behaviors in ways that render people less honest.
“This is a real concern. Our research shows that office managers should pay attention to the ergonomics of their workspaces. The results suggest that these physical spaces have tangible and real-world impact on our behaviors” said Yap.
Investigators evaluated findings from four studies conducted in the field and the laboratory.
One study manipulated the expansiveness of workspaces in the lab and tested whether “incidentally” expanded bodies (shaped organically by one’s environment) led to more dishonesty on a test.
Another experiment examined if participants in a more expansive driver’s seat would be more likely to “hit and run” when incentivized to go fast in a video-game driving simulation.
To extend results to a real-world context, an observational field study tested the ecological validity of the effect by examining whether automobile drivers’ seat size predicted the violation of parking laws in New York City.
The field study revealed that automobiles with more expansive driver’s seats were more likely to be illegally parked.
Source: Columbia Business School
Office space photo by shutterstock.
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