Prayer Helps Stop Partners From Cheating, Study Says

(Oct. 1) -- The trick to keeping a philanderer in line may be as old as philandering itself: praying for intervention.

A forthcoming study, from a team of scholars at Florida State University and the University of Georgia, shows that one way to reduce infidelity among couples is to pray. Prayer helps foster a "sanctified relationship," the authors argue, and what is sanctified tends to keep couples together.

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When couples pray, it tends to reduce infidelity, says a forthcoming study from scholars at Florida State University and the University of Georgia.

"For the people who prayed, their behaviors toward each other were much more committed and loving," Nathaniel Lambert, a postdoctoral fellow at FSU and one of the study's three authors, tells AOL News.

The academics tested their theory across three experiments. The first gathered 375 college students and asked them to pray for the well-being of their romantic partners for six weeks. The self-reported results showed that those who had been unfaithful in the past -- kissing somebody else or going all the way to having sex with someone else -- were faithful to their current partners because they'd prayed about them.

The second experiment tested the results of the first by asking a couple of questions: Is praying for a partner the same as thinking positive thoughts about him or her? And if so, are positive thoughts just as likely to keep couples committed? The answer, in short, is no and no. The people who prayed for their partners were more likely to remain faithful than the people who simply thought positive thoughts about them, the study contends.

The third experiment was an iteration on the first two: Moving beyond self-reported data to see if objective observers noticed that the couples that prayed together were more affectionate toward one another. Again, college students were recruited. Again, they were asked to pray for their partners -- this time for four weeks. At the end of the month, research assistants, unaware of the point of the study, brought the couples into the lab, asked them questions about their relationships and videotaped their responses. The research assistants saw a praying couple's interactions with each another as more committed than the control group.

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This study is potentially a big deal. As it notes, as much as 88 percent of the world's population believes in a deity. Ergo, roughly that many might pray to one. Lambert's hope is for the study to be incorporated into more marital counseling sessions.

That might work, though history has also demonstrated there to be no shortage of religious cads. The Bible itself is rife with them: Abraham, the father of three religions, fooled around on his wife Sarah; King David, slayer of Goliath, not only kept a couple of wives but perhaps had a gay lover too; and so on. And these are the men God favors.

It's a complicated business, when faith in a god is asked to strengthen the faith in one's partner, and perhaps the reason Lambert says this: "We're looking to do some follow-up studies."