Religion and sport: Do prayers help players?

At the Champions League final there is likely to be evidence of faith, with players making the sign of the cross and other religious gestures. But does belief really boost sporting performance?

All eyes will be on Lionel Messi, the world's greatest footballer, when he walks out with Barcelona in the Champions League final. If you watch carefully, you may see him crossing himself as he strides onto the pitch.

On the opposing side, Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez has been known to pray on the pitch.

Messi and Hernandez are not the only footballers to reveal their beliefs during the pursuit of their sport. Real Madrid star Kaka has often talked about his faith, praying on the pitch and thanking God for his rapid recovery from a broken back.

Other sportsmen, from Muhammad Ali to Jonathan Edwards, the triple jumper, have also spoken about the power of faith. They believe in different theologies, but all would assert they have benefited from their convictions. As Ali put it in the build-up to his clash with George Foreman in 1974: "How can I lose with Allah on my side?"
Brazil squad The Brazil football squad combine prayer with on the field success

Atheists will regard the idea that religion can make a difference to outcomes in sport as fanciful. But it is possible to put aside the issue of whether or not God exists and just examine the impact of faith on performance.

This is what Jeong-Keun Park of Seoul University did in 2000 by studying the performances of Korean athletes. He found that prayer was not only a key factor in coping with anxiety but also in attaining peak performance.

A quote from a participant in Park's study encapsulates the findings: "I always prepared my game with prayer. I committed all things to God, without worry. These prayers make me calmer and more secure and I forget the fear of losing. It resulted in good play."

This echoes extraordinary research about the power of faith from the world of medicine. In the 1960s, a series of studies found that heart disease is far less common among the religious than in the general population, even after controlling for different lifestyles. Later studies extended this finding, including a paper in 1996 which found that mortality rates in secular kibbutzim are nearly twice that of their religious counterparts.

It seemed that religious beliefs conferred real health benefits.
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“Start Quote
Jonathan Edwards

Any belief can have powerful effects, so long as it is held with sufficient conviction”

End Quote Jonathan Edwards

How is this possible? You can look for answers in one of the most perplexing of all psychological mysteries - the placebo effect, a phenomenon that has transfixed doctors since Theodor Kocker, a Swiss surgeon, performed 1,600 operations without anaesthesia in Berne in the 1890s.

Kocker's patients were told that anaesthesia had been administered and were able to endure surgery without even clenching their teeth, despite the fact that they had nothing beyond saltwater running through their veins.

In recent years, the placebo effect has been found to extend way beyond pain relief. It can cure ulcers, combat nausea and much else besides. It can also boost concentration, so long as the pill is dispensed in the right colour. Pink placebos, it turns out, have better concentration-boosting qualities than blue ones.

All of which hints at how the placebo effect works. Its power has nothing to do with the pharmacology of the drug (which is, by definition, non-existent); rather, its effect derives from the power of belief in the drug.

But this belief is not created out of nowhere, it is manufactured within a context. Anything that imbues the treatment with greater authenticity will strengthen belief. Colour, for example, is strongly connected in certain cultures with certain types of effect: red is buzzy, white is soothing. Drug companies play on these meanings. Stimulant medication tends to come in red or orange, antidepressants in white, and so on.
Diego Maradona Maradona thanked the "hand of God", but there are examples of belief appearing to affect outcome

The placebo effect provides one possible explanation as to why those with religious beliefs have better health outcomes. Instead of a belief in the efficacy of sugar pills, patients have a belief in the healing power of God. And it is not just Christians who have better outcomes, but also those who hold different beliefs, such as Muslims. It would seem that it is not the content, but the strength of belief that matters.

As Anne Harrington, Professor of Medical History at Harvard University, puts it: "There is an innate capacity for our bodies to bring into being, to the best of their ability, the optimistic scenarios in which we fervently believe".

The results from the study of South Korean athletes have been replicated again and again, and across religious boundaries. The belief that a higher power is guiding one's performance seems to boost performance and remove doubt, something which can help sports people just as much as it helps patients.

Even away from faith, there are examples where belief can appear to change outcomes in sport. England midfielder Paul Ince used to leave it until the last moment to put his shirt on. Goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer has worn the same shin pads since he was 16. Nani, the Manchester United winger, plays with his socks the wrong way round.

Of course, these superstitions have little relevance to performance - unless you really believe they do. As Edwards, who lost his faith after retirement, put it: "Any belief can have powerful effects, so long as it is held with sufficient conviction".

All of which suggests that religious conviction really can boost performance, but only if you truly believe.

Italy’s Woman Problem

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with world champion Italian swimmer Federica Pellegrini.

It’s 8:30 p.m., and all eyes turn to Italy’s most popular satirical news program, Striscia la Notizia (Strip the News). Two middle-aged men stand under a strobe light, one of them holding a belt from which dangles a vaguely phallic string of garlic. A woman slides across the floor on her stomach, wearing a sequined costume with a thong bottom and a deep-V neckline that plunges below her navel. As she stands up, one of the men dangles the garlic in front of her open mouth. She takes it in her hands and rubs it across the side of her face. “Go, turn around, let’s give you a little look,” the other man says, and touches the model’s derrière. “Thank you, doll.”

That’s how prime time is in Italy. The parade of prurience is inescapable, an expression of the rot that’s now manifest at the very top of the Italian government, a reflection of the society’s deeper problem with the evolving role of women. While headlines tell an endless tale of teenage models, paid escorts, and Moroccan belly dancers cavorting with 74-year-old Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the media make it clear that men are men, and women are window dressing. Boycotts, protests, and even complaints are rare, and when they’re voiced, few listen. So while Berlusconi may well be acting like a dirty old man these days, it has to be said that a goodly number of Italian women have been willing to play his demeaning games for a long time.
Anonymous

Photos: Italian women who defy the Berlusconi-bimbo sterotype
Defying the Berlusconi-Bimbo Stereotype

He might have planned things this way. Long before Berlusconi won his first stint as prime minister in the 1990s, the scandal-ridden media mogul owned 45 percent of Italy’s television market. He gained control of state television—another 50 percent—as head of government. With 95 percent of the TV market now under Berlusconi’s umbrella, his cumulative influence on the way Italian women are seen and see themselves is hard to overstate. So are the negative results for Italy: while other European lands actively promote gender equality as a builder of national prosperity, Berlusconi has led the charge in the opposite direction, effectively stifling women by creating a world in which they are seen first and foremost as sex objects instead of professional equals.

An appalling portrait of Berlusconi’s Italy emerges from the World Economic Forum’s October 2010 Global Gender Gap Report. The WEF looks at such issues as wage parity, labor-force participation, and career-advancement opportunities for women, arguing that closing the gender gap Europe-wide could boost the euro zone’s GDP as much as 13 percent. But as things stand now, Italy would be left leering on the sidelines. In every category but education, Italy lags badly: in labor participation, 87th place worldwide; wage parity, 121st; opportunity for women to take leadership positions, 97th. In the report’s overall ranking, Italy now places 74th in the world for its treatment of women—behind Colombia, Peru, and Vietnam, and seven places lower than it did when Berlusconi returned to office in 2008. “Italy continues to be one of the lowest-ranking countries in the EU and deteriorate[d] further over the last year,” the report says.

.अच्छे अभिभावक होते है इतालवी

नई दिल्ली। भारतीय बच्चों को गोद लेने वाले विदेशियों में इतालवी और स्पेनवासी लोग बच्चों के अच्छे अभिभावक साबित होते है और वे बड़ी उम्र के व विकलांग बच्चों को भी गोद लेने में हिचकिचाते नहीं है।

दिल्ली की बच्चा गोद लेने वाली 10 एजेंसियों के संगठन 'कोओर्डिनेटिंग वोलेंट्री एडॉप्शन रिसोर्स एजेंसी' [सीवीएआरए] की सचिव लीला बेग का कहना है कि बच्चों को गोद लेने के लिए कई विदेशी भारत आते है लेकिन हमने पाया है कि इतालवी और स्पेनवासी युगल बच्चों के अच्छे अभिभावक साबित होते है।

बेग ने कहा कि बच्चे गोद देने के बाद मिली जानकारियां बताती है कि वे बच्चों के अच्छे माता-पिता बनते है।

यद्यपि वह कहती है कि अन्य विदेशी लोग अच्छे अभिभावक नहीं होते है यह कहना गलत होगा। उन्होंने कहा कि विदेशी लोग जिन बच्चों को गोद लेते है वे अधिक उम्र के बच्चे होते है और उनमें से ज्यादातर को मनोवैज्ञानिक या किसी अन्य प्रकार की परेशानी होती है। अभिभावकों के बच्चों के गोद लेने के निर्णय में ये परेशानियां बाधा नहीं बनती है।

बेग कहती है कि तथ्य यह है कि उनमें से कुछ लोग हमसे विशेषरूप से ऐसे बच्चों के विषय में पूछते है जिन्हे अन्य लोग गोद नहीं लेते है या जिन बच्चों की व्यवहारगत परेशानियों के चलते उनका परित्याग किया गया हो। जब हम इन्हीं बच्चों को बाद में देखते है तो उनमें अभूतपूर्व परिवर्तन देखने को मिलता है। शायद उन पर व्यक्तिगत ध्यान दिया जाता है या उन्हे बहुत अच्छे घरेलू वातावरण में रखा जाता है।

बेग कहती है कि भारतीय लोग ऐसे बच्चों को गोद लेना पसंद करते है जिनकी उम्र एक साल से कम हो और जो गोरे व स्वस्थ हों। 'भारतीय जोड़ों को गोद लिए जाने वाले बच्चे से भारी अपेक्षाएं होती है। वह एक स्वस्थ बच्चा चाहते है जिसका रंग काला न हो लेकिन विदेशियों के साथ ऐसी समस्या नहीं है।'