Matthews W J, Conti J M, Sireci S G
School Psychology Program, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Altern Ther Health Med. 2001 Sep-Oct;7(5):42-52.
Little replicable empirical evidence on the effectiveness of prayer is available.
To explore the effect of intercessory prayer, positive visualization, and outcome expectancy on a wide range of medical and psychological measures in critically ill patients.
2 x 3 (expectancy x treatment) factorial study.
95 adult male and female volunteer hemodialysis subjects with end-stage renal disease from an outpatient clinic in Miami, Fla.
Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of the 6 treatment conditions.
A total of 20 dependent measures (10 medically based and 10 psychological) were used to assess the subjects' overall well-being. Analysis of covariance was used to control for pre-treatment differences between groups.
Subjects who expected to receive intercessory prayer reported feeling significantly better than did those who expected to receive positive visualization (F1.93 = 5.42; P < .02). No other statistically significant main effects or interactions were found for either expectancy, intercessory prayer, or positive visualization on the remaining dependent measures. Analysis of effect sizes on all dependent measures failed to indicate even a small magnitude of effect for intercessory prayer as contrasted with expectancy on the medical or psychological variables.
The effects of intercessory prayer and transpersonal positive visualization cannot be distinguished from the effect of expectancy. Therefore, those 2 interventions do not appear to be effective treatments.
关于祈祷有效性的可重复实证证据很少。
探讨代祷、积极想象和结果预期对重症患者一系列医学和心理指标的影响。
2×3（预期×治疗）析因研究。
来自佛罗里达州迈阿密一家门诊诊所的95名患有终末期肾病的成年男性和女性自愿血液透析受试者。
参与者被随机分配到6种治疗条件中的一种。
共使用20项相关指标（10项基于医学指标，10项心理指标）来评估受试者的总体幸福感。采用协方差分析来控制组间治疗前的差异。
预期接受代祷的受试者报告感觉明显优于预期接受积极想象的受试者（F1.93 = 5.42；P < .02）。在其余相关指标上，未发现预期、代祷或积极想象有其他具有统计学意义的主效应或交互作用。对所有相关指标的效应量分析表明，与预期相比，代祷对医学或心理变量的影响甚至未达到小效应量。
代祷和超个人积极想象的效果与预期效果无法区分。因此，这两种干预措施似乎不是有效的治疗方法。
