How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions

Social Psychology
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How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?

Shane Sharp
Social Psychology Quarterly 2010 73: 417
DOI: 10.1177/0190272510389129
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Social Psychology Quarterly

Vol. 73, No. 4, 417437
American Sociological Association 2010
DOI: 10.1177/0190272510389129
http://spq.sagepub.com
How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?

SHANE SHARP
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Many individuals use prayer to manage negative emotions, but scholars know little about
how prayer accomplishes this task. Using in-depth interview data from victims of intimate
partner violence, I argue that prayer is an imaginary social support interaction that provides
individuals with resources they use to perform individual emotion management strategies. In
particular, interactions with God through prayer provide individuals (1) an other to whom
one can express and vent anger; (2) positive reflected appraisals that help maintain selfesteem; (3) reinterpretive cognitions that make situations seem less threatening; (4) an other
with whom one can interact to zone out negative emotion-inducing stimuli; and (5) an
emotion management model to imitate. Most of these resources help individuals deal primarily with a particular type of emotion and have an appreciable influence on social action. The
analysis presented suggests that scholars should investigate how interactions with imagined
others help individuals manage emotions.
Keywords: prayer, emotion management, imagined others, social support
any individuals manage negative

emotions through prayer. Popular
culture and sentiment attest to this:
The inspirational and spirituality sections of large-chain bookstores contain dozens, sometimes hundreds, of titles about
how to use prayer to overcome individual sorrows and strife, and the common saying in
Western culture that there are no atheists
in foxholes draws attention to the tendency
for people to pray to some sort of deity or
I would like to thank all the participants in this study
and the domestic violence organizations that helped in
recruiting them. I would also like to thank Cameron
Macdonald, Myra Ferree, John Levi Martin, Peter
Brinson, Greg Kordsmeier, Marianne Kunkel, the
participants of Social Psychology and Microsociology
brownbag at the University of Wisconsin, and
especially Deborah Carr for all the comments
and suggestions to improve this manuscript. This
study was funded in part by the University of
Wisconsin Department of Sociology and the Constant
H. Jacquet Research Award from the Religious
Research Association. I am solely responsible for all
interpretations and errors. Direct correspondence to
University of Wisconsin, Department of Sociology,
1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706;
josharp@ssc.wisc.edu.
Higher Power when dealing with intense

feelings of fear and other negative emotions.
Numerous empirical studies support these
popular notions; scholars have shown that
individuals use prayer to manage negative
emotions caused by suffering from a major
illness (e.g., Hawley and Irutia 1998; Koenig,
George, and Siegler 1988; Thompson et al.
1993), experiencing a traumatic event (e.g.,
Harris et al. 2008; Meisenhelder and Marcum
2004), or experiencing a negative life event
in general (e.g., Bade and Cook 2008; Harris
et al. 2005).
For all that we know about prayer, however, we still know very little. Despite the
fact that 75 percent of Americans report praying on a daily or weekly basis (Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life 2008), from the
perspective of science prayer remains
a scarcely studied phenomenon (Masters
and Speilmans 2007:330; see also Spilka
et al. 2003:490; Wuthnow 2008). One thing
in particular that scholars still know little
about is how prayer helps individuals manage
negative emotions such as fear, sadness, and
anger. While previous scholars have found
that individuals do use prayer to manage
418
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY
negative emotions, their explanations for how

this works are wanting. Several investigators
simply note that individuals use prayer to
manage negative emotions without explaining
how this act accomplishes this task (e.g.,
Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub 1989; Thompson et al. 1993). For instance, although Thoits
(1990) found that prayer was a common way
individuals managed negative emotions, she
does not provide an explanation for how it
accomplishes this task. Koenig, George, and
Siegler (1988) do the same; although the
researchers interviewed 100 elderly and adult
participants and found that prayer was a common way to deal with negative emotions during stressful life events, they offer little
explanation for this relationship. Similarly,
Kenneth Pargament and his colleagues (e.g.,
Pargament 1997; Pargament et al. 2001; Pargament et al. 1998) have conducted numerous
studies on religion and coping. This research
highlights that individuals often seek spiritual support through prayer to help deal with
negative emotions caused by experiencing
stressful life events, but they provide little theory or data that might explain the processes by
which this support occurs. Other investigators
conflate explanations for how prayer helps
manage emotions with emotion management
outcomes (e.g., Banziger, Uden, and Janssen
2008; Harris et al. 2008). For instance,
Hawely and Irutia (1998) argue that prayer
helped heart-surgery patients deal with the
fear and anxiety they had concerning the medical procedure because it brought them
a sense of comfort. Additionally, Bade and
Cook (2008) argue that prayer helps individuals manage emotions because it helps them
calm down, gain a sense of comfort, and
decrease their fear. However, calming down,
gaining a sense of comfort, and decreasing
fear are emotion management outcomes of
prayer, not explanations for how prayer helps
individuals manage negative emotions. Thus,
there is certainly warrant for an empirically
grounded theory to answer how prayer helps
individuals manage emotions.
Using in-depth interviews with victims of
intimate partner violence (I choose to use
the term victim in this article because the
term captures the notion that someone has

experienced moral wrongs and harms), I offer
a social psychological answer to this question.
Conceptualizing prayer as a legitimate social
interaction and focusing on the interactional
nature of social support, I argue that prayer
is an imaginary social support interaction with
a deity that provides individuals with
resources they use to carry out individual
emotion management strategies (cf. Pollner
1989). In particular, interactions with God
through prayer provide individuals with: (1)
an other to whom one can express and vent
anger; (2) positive reflected appraisals that
help increase self-esteem and lessen sadness;
(3) reinterpretive cognitions that make situations seem less threatening and thus less fearful; (4) an other with whom one can interact to
zone out negative emotion-inducing stimuli; and (5) an emotion management model
to imitate to mitigate feelings of anger. I conclude by discussing the limitations and the
various implications of the analysis and findings for the sociology of emotions, the sociology of religion, and sociological theory.
CONCEPTUALIZING PRAYER, SPECIFICYING
SOCIAL SUPPORT RESOURCES
To understand prayer as an imaginary

social support interaction that provides individuals with emotion management resources
requires (1) conceptualizing prayer as an
imaginary, yet legitimate, social interaction
and (2) focusing on how interactions with
supportive others provide individuals with
specific resources they can use to manage
negative emotions.
Prayer as Imaginary Social Interaction
Thinking of prayer as a type of social support first requires thinking about prayer as
something other than an individual, private,
and intrapsychological phenomenon (see,
e.g., Carver et al. 1989; Ladd and Spilka
2002; Thoits 1990). So, like Pollner (1989),
Stark and Finke (2000), and Cerulo and Barra
(2008), I conceptualize prayer as a legitimate
social interaction; in particular, I conceptualize prayer as an imaginary social interaction
PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

(Caughey 1984:22) between an individual and
an imagined actor.1 The actual content of
prayer can vary tremendously; for example,
prayers can contain simple dialogic statements, expressions of praise, appeals for forgiveness, and requests for assistance.2
Despite its content, however, in form prayer
fundamentally consists of an intentional social
interaction between two actors, i.e., the concrete individual and a subjectively real deity.3
Even if the ontological status of one of the
actors is indeterminate, the fact is that individuals who pray subjectively believe and feel
that they are interacting, conversing, and have
a relationship with another actor that actually
hears, understands, and reacts to them.
Imaginary social interactions such as
prayer share many characteristics with concrete social interactions. When individuals
pray to God, they perceive and become cognitively attentive to particular characteristics,
qualities, and motives of this imagined other.
The sources of these perceived attributes are
many, including religious socialization, the
teachings of particular religious traditions,
and common cultural and religious beliefs
about the nature of God. Because of the accumulation of knowledge about God through
these sources, individuals believe they know
God on a personal and intimate level (cf. Horton and Wohl 1956). These perceived characteristics of God, like the perceived
characteristics of concrete others, influence
1
I do not mean to question the subjective or objective

validity of these interactions or actors with my use of the
terms imaginary and imagined. Rather, I use these
terms in a relative sense to distinguish these types of interactions and actors from concrete interactions or actors, or
interactions in which a third party can observe both actors.
Both imaginary and concrete interactions are ontologically real.
2
Individuals can also pray for others (intercessory
prayer). However, I focus on prayer for the self in this
article because of my concern with how individuals use
prayer to manage their own negative emotions.
3
Since I argue that intentional interaction is an important aspect of prayer, I distinguish prayer from meditation.
Meditation consists of conscious attempts to focus attention intensely on an objectwhich can be a deitythat
do not have interaction as their intent (Shapiro
2008:14). For example, one can focus attention on a deity
without having an intentional interaction with this other.
419
and shape individuals interactions with this

imagined other (Caughey 1984:20). Moreover, as in interactions with concrete others,
when interacting with God individuals take
the role of the other (Mead 1934) and perceive themselves in the way they believe God
perceives them, adjusting their talk, cognitions, and actions accordingly. Religious
teachings and general cultural ideas about
how God views humanity in general and specific individuals in particular structure the
content of these perceptions. Finally, imaginary social interactions with God through
prayer, like concrete interactions, have a great
deal of influence on social action and subjective experience; as Caughey (1984) argues,
just as interactions with concrete others are
common conversation topics, influence decision making, and shape the cognitive and
emotional experiences of individuals, so too
do interactions with imagined others.
In short, because imaginary interactions
with God through prayer share many of the
characteristics of interactions with concrete
others, scholars can conceptualize and analyze
these imaginary interactions in the same manner as concrete interactions (see Caughey
1984:29; Cerulo and Barra 2008:376). As I
will argue below, an important characteristic
that imaginary social interactions share with
concrete ones is that they can provide individuals with emotion management resources.
Social Support Interactions as a Source of
Emotion Management Resources
Thinking of prayer as a type of social support interaction also requires a more interactional approach to the relationship between
individual emotion management strategies
and social support (Pearlin 1999; Pearlin and
McCall 1990). Numerous scholars have shown
that individuals perform various strategies of
emotion managementor the manipulation
of attitudes, thoughts, or behaviors in the service of changing ones own feelings (Scheff
1979:9; see also Hochschild 1983)when
they experience negative emotions. Individuals
use both cognitive and behavioral strategies to
manage these emotions. Behaviorally, people
420
might confront the source of negative

emotionssuch as when one confronts a friend
who has made them upsetor use drugs or
alcoholsuch as when one drowns ones sorrows with a bottle of whiskey. Cognitively,
people might try to reinterpret the situation
such as when one interprets finding out that
ones boyfriend is cheating on her as something better to find out sooner than lateror
distract themselves so as not to think about
the object causing negative emotionssuch
as when one watches TV to stop thinking about
his poor financial circumstances (see Thoits
1990:1914 for a more extensive discussion
of these strategies.)
While individuals do perform emotion
management strategies on their own, they
often do not do so alone. As numerous scholars have shown, individuals often turn to others in their social support networks (family
members, friends, coworkers) for help in
managing their emotions (e.g., Carver et al.
1989; House, Umberson, and Landis 1988;
Thoits 1995). The perceived characteristics
of others influence whom individuals seek
out for help in managing their emotions. In
particular, individuals often look to others
who they believe can empathize with their situations, are socioculturally similar, and/or
who have emotion management expertise
(i.e., mental health specialists) for social support (Thoits 1984, 1985).
Although social psychologists tend to conceptualize social support as a general
resource that functions to help individuals
manage negative emotions (see Thoits
1995), a problem with this conceptualization
is that it deflects focus away from the interactional nature of social support and the interactional ingredients that explain how social
support helps people manage emotions (Pearlin 1999; Pearlin and McCall 1990). Actual
social support does not help individuals manage emotions unmediated. Rather, interactions with supportive others provide
individuals with specific social, cognitive,
and behavioral resources they use to carry
out individual emotion management strategies; in other words, emotion management
resources are the interactional ingredients
that explain how social support helps people

manage emotions. For instance, when supportive others tell an individual suffering
from low self-esteem that they love her, she
uses this knowledge to reevaluate her selfconcept and thus bolster her self-esteem.
Sometimes supportive others directly offer
these resources in interactions (Pearlin 1999;
Thoits 1984); other times, these resources
are byproducts or unintended consequences
of social support interactions.
The emotion management resources individuals receive during social support interactions are varied and numerous. Although I
cannot list them all here, several of these
resources deserve consideration. One type is
reinterpretive resources, which are cognitions
and practices that individuals use to reinterpret
situations so they seem less threatening.
Examples of this include when divorcees use
the new identities support-group leaders provide to reinterpret their relationship status as
positive, inducing fewer negative emotions
(Francis 1997), or when new flight attendants
use veterans fear-of-flying explanations
to reinterpret the behavior of belligerent
passengers (Hochschild 1983). Modeling
resources provide individuals with helpful
models to follow to manage their emotions;
for example, Smith and Kleinman (1989)
show how interns use medical residents
behavior as helpful models to emulate to manage the emotions that occur during discomforting medical encounters. Interpersonal
resources are simply the interactions with
available supportive otherssuch as best
friends, trusted colleagues, and mental health
professionals (Thoits 1985)that allow individuals to carry out emotion management
strategies, such as expressing and venting negative emotions and distracting oneself from
negative emotion-inducing stimuli. Another
emotion management resource that social support interactions provide is positive reflected
appraisals (Rosenberg 1979); when suffering
from low self-esteem and attendant feelings
of sadness, supportive others provide positive
evaluations that individuals use to reevaluate
their self-concept, which in turn increases their
self-esteem and lessens their sadness.

While interactions with concrete supportive others provide individuals with emotion management resources, it is also the
case that interactions with imagined others
provide individuals with these resources.
As I will show below, interactions with
the imagined other of God provide individuals with a variety of resources they use to
carry out particular emotion management
strategies.
STUDY PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS
Study Participants
I use data from in-depth interviews with

intimate partner abuse victims who prayed
to manage their negative emotions to develop
and offer evidence for my theory of prayer as
imaginary social support. The data come from
an ongoing project investigating the role religion plays in the lives and experiences of intimate partner abuse victims. To date, I have
interviewed 62 current and former victims
from a wide range of religious, socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, and geographical backgrounds. I have used maximum variation
sampling (Lofland et al. 2006; Miles and Huberman 1994) as my overall sampling strategy. The goal of this sampling strategy is to
achieve maximum variation of types of personal religiosities to theorize if and how personal religiosity influences and is influenced
by the experiences, decision-making, and perceptions of victims concerning their abusive
experiences.
The experiences of intimate partner abuse
victims provide an excellent case in which
to explore how prayer helps individual manage emotions because these individuals experience many intense negative emotions during
and often after their experiences (Bean and
Moller 2002; Hourly, Kaslow, and Thompson
2005; Zlotnick, Johnson, and Kohn 2006; see
Golding 1999 for a meta-analysis). Three of
these negative emotionssadness, anger,
and fearare especially prevalent among
these individuals. First, victims often experience sadness and depression stemming from
the humiliation and entrapment (Brown
2002) that occur during abusive relationships.
421
Often called derogatory names and told that

they are worthless by their abusers, victims experience humiliation that lowers their
self-esteem, which in turn leads to feelings
of depression. Many victims told me the
humiliation they experienced was worse
than the physical abuse they experienced,
since, to paraphrase several victims, bruises
heal, but words stay with you forever. Many
victims also feel physically, socially, and
symbolically entrapped (Sharp 2009) in their
abusive relationships, and these feelings
cause them to experience feelings of sadness.
Second, experiencing intimate partner violence often leads to feelings of anger. Scholars contend that anger stems from perceptions
that one has been intentionally wronged by
another (e.g., Averill 1982). Victims experience anger toward their abusers because
they perceive the violence they suffer as
intentional wrongdoing by their abusers.
Moreover, victims internalize their anger
because they cannot express this emotion to
their abusers for fear of harmful retaliation.
Finally, victims also experience intense feelings of fear. The physical and psychological
harm perpetrated and threatened by abusers
causes victims to worry about their overall
well-being and existential security. That abusive episodes are often unpredictable exacerbates these feelings.
All of the participants in this study experienced what Johnson and Ferraro (2000) call
intimate terrorism, a type of intimate partner violence in which one partner uses physical abuse, psychological/emotional abuse,
isolation tactics, and sexual abuse in efforts
to control the other partner (see also Felson
and Messner 2000). The vast majority of participants (about 95 percent) experienced both
physical abuse (e.g., being hit, punched, slapped, kicked, etc.) and psychological/emotional abuse (e.g., being called derogatory
terms, such as worthless; constantly being
threatened with mortal harm, etc.). About five
percent experienced only psychological/emotional abuse; however, all of these participants did experience threats of physical
harm. Around 70 percent of the sample experienced the use of isolation tactics by their
422
intimate partners, and five participants experienced sexual abuse.

The average age of participants is 40.5; the
youngest participant is 19 and the oldest is 72.
In terms of race and ethnicity, 62 percent of
the participants are white, 32 percent are
black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 3 percent
are Asian. The social class status of participants, as measured by educational attainment,
varied tremendously: 9 have less than a high
school degree, 15 have a high school diploma
or equivalent, 8 have an associates or technical degree, 12 have completed some college
(including some who are currently in college), 13 have college degrees, and 5 have
graduate or professional degrees. In terms of
religious affiliation,4 32 percent are conservative Protestant, 16 percent belong to historically black churches, 10 percent are
mainline Protestant, 16 percent are Catholic,
3 percent are Mormon, 17 percent claim no
particular religious preference but claim religious and spiritual beliefs, and 6 percent have
no religious beliefs in particular and/or are
avowed atheists. The breakdown of religious
affiliations in my sample approaches that of
the general U.S. population (Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life 2008). All the names
used for participants in this article are
pseudonyms.
Methods
I recruited participants from the middle

Tennessee, southern Wisconsin, southern
Alabama, metropolitan Boston, San Francisco
Bay area, New York City, metropolitan Philadelphia, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul areas
to seek variety in demographic and religious
characteristics of the potential participant
pool. I recruited participants 1) through
domestic violence shelters and agencies, 2)
by a research flyer, and 3) by having participants give my contact information to other
potential participants. I used the last technique the least because using it as the main
4
The typology of religious affiliations is based on
those of Roof and McKinney (1987), Steensland et al.
(2000), and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
(2008) typologies.
way to recruit participants would have made

it difficult to achieve maximum variation of
religiosities. When recruiting participants, I
told them that I wanted to find out more about
how their religious beliefs, practices, and
institutions affected the experiences of intimate partner violence and, conversely, how
their experiences of violence influenced their
religious beliefs, practices, and interactions
with religious institutions. I told them that I
was a graduate student studying at a state university and that I was not affiliated with any
religious organization or particular religious
congregation. Although I cannot provide an
accurate response rate because of how I recruited participants, I have been able to
achieve my sampling strategy of maximum
variation using these recruitment techniques.
I conducted semistructured in-depth interviews with all the participants of this study.
The interviews consisted of a variety of
questions that assessed the participants
demographic and religious characteristics,
childhood history, abuse history, personal
religious beliefs, and the various ways that
their religious beliefs and institutions influenced their perceptions, experiences, and
decisions regarding their abusive situations.
The interviews also addressed experiences
with religious and secular domestic violence
agencies, and solicited advice for individuals
currently experiencing partner abuse and for
domestic violence agencies. I discuss how I
addressed the rapport-building challenges
posed by my male gender status, the emotionally sensitive nature of the interview subject
matter, and the fact that I was asking probing
questions about religious beliefs that participants might interpret as judgmental in the
Appendix, which can be found on the SPQ
journal Web site (www.asanet.org/spq).
Most importantly for this article, I asked
participants several questions about the use
of prayer during their abusive experiences.
Following inductive interviewing methodology, I began initial interviews with only general questions concerning the role religion
plays in the lives of intimate partner violence
victims. During these initial interviews, victims expressed to me how important praying

or talking with God was for them while
they were in abusive relationships and during
particular episodes of violence, explaining to
me that it helped them deal with the fear,
anger, and/or sadness that they experienced
while in their abusive relationships. I viewed
this as an opportunity to learn more about
how individuals use prayer to manage negative
emotions, and so in subsequent interviews I
began asking victims more questions about
their praying activities. I was careful to ask
victims basic general questions about prayerfor example, Did you talk to God during
your abusive experiences?so as not to bias
the responses I received. The vast majority
of the subsequent victims with avowed religious beliefs I interviewed told me that
they found prayer helpful in dealing with
their negative emotions. When they responded in this way, I asked them to
elaborate or to explain more about how
exactly prayer helped them deal with their
negative emotions. Arriving at the reasons
why prayer worked in this way for victims
usually required several follow-up questions
to their initial responses, since most would
say that it was helpful in dealing with negative emotions without exactly explaining
why. I was also careful in my follow-up
questioning not to ask any leading questions;
for example, I would ask interviewees,
How exactly did you find it helpful?
without offering or suggesting any responses
to this question from previous interviewees.
Although a few victims could not do so,
through additional questioning most were
able to articulate subjectively felt reasons
why praying helped them deal with negative
emotions.
I conducted the majority of the interviews
face-to-face, with the other interviews occurring over telephone. Interviews on average
lasted around two hours. For some participants, two or more sessions were required to
complete the interview. I conducted face-toface interviews in a variety of places chosen
by participants, including public libraries,
domestic violence shelters, fast food restaurants, and the homes of participants. I conducted both face-to-face and telephone
423
interviews at various times chosen by participants. I had participants choose interview

sites and times because I felt they would
know a place and time that would be the
most convenient and safe for them. I transcribed all interviews verbatim.
PRAYER, IMAGINARY SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND
EMOTION MANAGEMENT RESOURCES
When the victims I interviewed experienced negative emotions caused by their abusive situations, they often prayed to God.
These imaginary interactions with this imagined other, like interactions with supportive
concrete others, provided victims with various resources that helped them carry out individual emotion management strategies. Thus,
victims interactions with God were imaginary social support interactions.
These imaginary social support interactions share two main characteristics with concrete social support interactions. First, like
social support interactions with concrete others, victims perceived characteristics of God
(loving, powerful, caring, etc.) influenced
why they sought out interactions with this
imagined other to help them manage their
emotions. Second, as in social support interactions with concrete others, the resources
provided through imaginary interactions
with God were numerous and varied.
While they do share many characteristics
with concrete social support interactions,
imaginary social support interactions do
have a unique and consequential characteristic: They are always available. Unlike concrete social support interactionswhere the
other has to be physically present to provide
emotion management resourcesin imaginary social support interactions the other is
always available to provide these resources.
Thus, when concrete others were not available to provide victims social support because
of their situational or personal factors, victims
often turned to the imagined other of God for
emotion management resources.
Below I outline the five emotion management resources victims received through interactions with God in the order in which
424
they most appear in my data. While describing each of these resources in detail, I discuss
how each particular resource (except for
zoning out) helped victims manage a particular negative emotion and how victims
perceived characteristics of God influenced
why they sought out these resources from
this imagined other. I also discuss how victims personal and situational circumstances,
as well as the always-available nature of these
interactions, explain why victims sought out
emotion management resources from God.
Providing an Other to Express Negative
Emotions
The most common emotion management

resource interactions with God provided to
victims was a significant other to whom
they could express anger and frustration (37
percent). Victims who used prayer to express
these negative emotions perceived God as
loving, caring, and nonjudgmentalall commonly held beliefs of the characteristics of
God (e.g., Kunkel et al. 1999; Noffke and
McFadden 2004). Because of this perception,
victims felt that they had a significant other to
express and vent their anger and frustration
that was not available to them because they
were in a violent romantic relationship. In
other words, interactions with God provided
victims with an interpersonal resource of a listening ear, someone to talk to about what they
were feeling without fear of judgment or negative reprisal. Expressing these emotions
through prayer made victims feel subjectively
better and often helped them come to understandings of their situations that further lessened their negative feelings.
Consider Monica, a 25-year-old white
woman who was residing in a transitional living housing project for partner abuse victims
when we met. Despite the fact that she
described herself as a nonpracticing Catholic,
Monica still drew on the religious beliefs and
practices instilled in her during her childhood
to cope with the emotional and physical abuse
she suffered. Prayer was one of these religious practices that she said helped her manage the anger caused by experiencing abuse
from someone she cared about deeply. I asked

Monica how exactly praying helped bring her
comfort. She responded:
Its [praying is] just, its kinda like getting
something off your chest, you know. I
mean, youre kinda talking about it with
somebody, you know. I mean, its just
a way to kinda voice your opinion, you
know, about something, or, you know, let
the Lord know, you know, how you would
like something. . .
When I asked Monica why it was important

for her to voice her opinion about what
she was experiencing to God, she responded,
Just so they [the emotions] dont build up,
you know. I mean, cause if they build up,
you know, anything could happen. I mean,
you can get really depressed, or you can get
really mad, and, you know, so theyre, you
know, its just not healthy.
Chamika, a 29-year-old black Holiness
church member, also found prayer helpful
in dealing with feelings of anger and frustration. When I met Chamika, she was residing
in an abuse shelter. She was there to hide
from her abusive ex-boyfriend who was
about to go to trial for a murder that Chamika witnessed. Since she was the only witness to the murder, her ex-boyfriend had
threatened to kill her. To maintain her safety,
the local police department asked the local
abuse shelterwhose location was a secret
to the publicto take in Chamika until the
trial and subsequent sentencing, which the
shelter was more than happy to do. Although
Chamika appreciated the sense of safety
residing in the shelter brought her, she nevertheless was frustrated and angered by the
fact that she could not leave the shelter under
any circumstance lest her ex-boyfriend or
somebody he knew saw her. She also was
feeling a lot of frustration and anger toward
the fellow residents of the shelter, an inevitable reaction when one has to live in a quasicommunal setting with dozens of unfamiliar
women and children. Chamika told me that
she was dealing with all of her frustration
and anger in part through prayer. When I

asked Chamika how praying helped her deal
with these emotions, she said:
[Praying] helps to release a lot of tension
and stress, cause when I pray I can kinda
get things off my chest. I can talk to the
Lord about it. You know, if something
aint going right, life is just starting to irritate me and starting to piss me off, I can
pray about it.
Both Monica and Chamika point out the

important interpersonal aspect of praying.
They both subjectively felt that they were expressing their emotions to anotherGod.
This interaction allowed them to get their
negative feelings off their chest, to paraphrase
both Monica and Chamika. Without this
imagined significant other with whom they
could interact to express their emotions,
both Monica and Chamika subjectively felt
that their emotions would have built up
and led to further unhealthy feelings of frustration and anger.
An important characteristic of the imagined other in these social support interactions
is the perceived nature of the other (i.e., God)
in the relationship. Victims who used prayer
to express their anger and frustration perceived God as a loving parental or friendly
figure who was nonjudgmental and forgiving;
thus, victims felt they could express their
anger to this other in interaction without
fear of judgment or negative retaliation. For
instance, consider Aliza, a twenty-six-yearold white member of a nondenominational
evangelical church. I met Aliza while she
was residing in a shelter in southern Wisconsin. Aliza experienced both emotional and
physical abuse from her ex-boyfriend, which
caused her to feel great anger. Aliza said
that she dealt with her anger in part through
prayer, which she said brought her comfort
during the abuse. When I then asked Aliza
why she found prayer helpful in dealing
with her anger, she said, Its like talking to
God like you would a friend or a parent,
you know. Nadinea 28-year-old white
Mormonexpressed a similar idea. She
found expressing her anger and frustration
through prayer helpful because she felt she
425
could express these emotions to God without

fear of retaliation. Nadine believes that God
loves her and all of humanity without condition. Because she believes this, Nadine felt
that even when she shouted or expressed anger
to God, she did not need to worry about retaliatory anger from this Other: I just felt like
He, um, just, I dont know, I just felt like I
can just, like, yell or get it out or just be really,
um, hard with Him, and He, He was still loving, that He wasnt hurtful back. . .
The reason that victims frequently interacted with God to express their anger and
frustration also stems partly from the fact
that most of them had no actual significant
others in their lives to whom they felt comfortable expressing these emotions. There
were four factors leading to this, singularly
for some and in various combinations for others. First, expressing anger to their abusers
often brought real and/or expected injurious
repercussions. That is, victims were fearful
of expressing their anger toward their abusers
either because they had experienced negative
repercussions for doing so in the past or
because they anticipated negative consequences. Victims felt that they could express
their anger to God, however, because they
perceived this imagined other as a loving
and caring figure who would not punish
them or react disapprovingly to their expression of anger and other negative emotions.
Abusers isolation tactics were another
reason for the lack of significant others to
whom victims could express negative emotions. Abusive partners often isolate their victims from important family and friends as
a means to assert power and control in the
relationship (Felson and Messner 2000).
This was the case for many of the victims I
interviewed. Many told me that their partners
kept them from talking and spending time
with family and friends. Isolated from these
significant others, victims turned to God as
a safe significant other to whom they could
express their anger without injurious
repercussions.
Third, several victims used prayer to
express their anger because of the shame and
stigma they felt for being a victim of abuse.
426
These feelings of shame and stigma often led

victims not to discuss their emotions caused
by their abusive situations with concrete significant otherssuch as parents, siblings, and
friendswith whom they otherwise usually
felt comfortable expressing their emotions.
For example, Gaylea 23-year-old white
Catholic who also used prayer to express her
angertold me that she felt ashamed for
remaining in an abusive relationship for so
long. She said that these feelings of shame
had kept her even from telling her parents
about this abusive relationship despite the
fact that it ended several years ago and that
she normally feels comfortable discussing her
negative feelings with them.
Fourth, several victims expressed their
negative emotions through prayer because
they wanted to avoid upsetting significant
others. This was the case for Carly, a 50year-old white Pentecostal. When Carly first
started experiencing abuse from her husband,
she expressed her anger about her situation to
her mother. However, Carly stopped expressing her anger to her mother because it upset
her so bad to know what was going on. For
some victims, then, not wanting to upset others by expressing their negative emotions
stemming from abuse led them to express
these emotions to God, an other whom they
felt could handle hearing about their anger
and frustration.
A question unresolved up to this point,
however, is exactly how expressing their
anger to God helps victims resolve this negative emotion. Based on the accounts of the
victims I interviewed, expressing anger to
God through prayer works to resolve this negative emotion in two general ways: (1) by
decreasing the mental and physical energy
needed to inhibit anger and (2) by increasing
self-understanding.
Several psychologists have found that expressing negative emotions increases mental
and physical health by decreasing the mental
and physical energy needed to inhibit negative emotions. It often takes a lot of energy
to inhibit negative emotions, and this itself
can be stressful for individuals (Pennebaker
1990; Pennebaker and Beall 1986; Stanton
et al. 2000). Mental and physical relief

occurred when victims expressed their anger
to God through prayer. By expressing their
anger to this imagined other, victims did not
have to expend a great amount of energy suppressing these feelings. Victims avowed
sense of comfort and subjective well-being
when they were able to express their anger
and frustration to God supports this claim.
Psychologists also have found that in the
course of expressing negative emotions, individuals often develop cognitively and emotionally satisfying accounts of the situations
that provoked the negative emotions. For
instance, Pennebaker, Mayne, and Francis
(1997) found that individuals often demonstrated insight and causal reasoning concerning their traumatic events while expressing
their emotions (see also Pennebaker 1997).
Accordingly, victims often came to new
understandings of their situations while expressing their anger to God, and these new
understandings in turn helped them deal
with this emotion. This was the case for
Carol, a white Church of Christ member in
her early forties. Carol said that confiding
her anger to God through prayer helped her
become less angry at herself. This anger
was caused by Carols initial belief that she
was responsible for the physical and emotional abuse that she suffered because she
was, as she put it, not being the wife I
needed to be. However, through her constant prayer to God, Carol came to the realization that she was not to blame for the abuse:
Talking to Gods always helpful. I mean,
like I said, Hes, Hes not gonna give you
the answer immediately. But Hell help you
find an answer. . . . It, it made me less angry
at myself for letting it happen . . . I realized
that it wasnt me. . .It was [my husband]. I
mean, he was the one who was controlling
me and taking advantage of our finances
and, and different things like that
. . . and slowly He [God] showed that to
me . . . I would blame myself totally, that I
was the one who, I mean, I could just do little
bitty things and hed get mad. And I could
sometimes not even know what I did. And,
uh, I would take responsibility for them.

But, I, I dont know. He showed me it wasnt
my fault.
Thus, through the process of expressing her

anger to God through prayer, Carol came to
an understanding of her abusive situation
that placed the blame for the abuse on her
husband and not herself. This new understanding helped Carol alleviate the anger
that she felt toward herself.
Providing Positive Reflected Appraisals
Scholars from Cooley (1902) to Rosenberg

(1979) have argued that individuals base their
self-esteem partly on their perceptions of the
evaluations significant others have of them.
When individuals perceive these reflected
appraisals as negative, they often suffer
from low self-esteem and concomitant feelings of sadness and depression. Such was
the case for many of the victims I interviewed. Called derogatory terms like
whore, bitch, and slut, and told on
a regular basis that no one else loved them
and that they were worthless, victims frequently had to deal with attacks on their
self-esteem from these negative appraisals.
Several victims, however, countered these
negative reflective appraisals through prayer
(24 percent). As with interactions with concrete others, when interacting with God
through prayer victims took the role of the
other and imagined themselves the way they
believed God perceived them. Given their
belief that God cared about them, loved
them, and saw them as people of value, victims began to think of themselves as valued
individuals during their interactions with
God. In other words, interactions with God
through prayer provided victims with positive
reflected appraisals which they used to
increase their senses of self-worth and, in
turn, lessen their feelings of sadness and
depression.
Moreover, the reflected appraisals received during interactions with God trumped,
so to speak, the appraisals of their abusers.
Scholars have shown that individuals value
and respect the reflected appraisals of some
427
concrete actors over others, and individuals

are more likely to value and respect the perceived opinions of trusted others (Rosenberg
1979:2645). Since these victims perceived
God as all-knowing and all-powerful, they
trusted the positive self-appraisals they
experienced during prayer more than the
negative self-appraisals that came from their
abusers.
Marianne, a white Southern Baptist in her
early fifties, maintained her self-esteem
through her interactions with God through
prayer. Marianne was married to her abusive
husband for almost two decades. During these
years, Marianne dealt with blows to both her
health and heart. Her husband, a drill sergeant, physically assaulted her on a regular
basis and without provocation, and he
viciously ridiculed and belittled her. According to Marianne, these constant verbal assaults on her self caused her to feel
despondent and dejected. However, Marianne
was able to combat these negative feelings
through prayer, recounting that this religious
act would always bring her a sense of comfort
during her marriage. When I asked her how
praying did this, Marianne responded:
I guess, (sighs) the number one thing for me
would be the realization that theres, there
was, the God out there the whole time where
Im out thinking, well, this is my life so
screwed up. I need to get drunk. No, I
need to take drugs. No, I need to kill myself.
. . . And just to, to be able to just sit down
and think that God wanted to communicate
with me and that Im not a scumbag in front
of His eyes no matter what. Wow, how cool
is that?
Biancaa black Methodist in her

midfiftiesexpressed similar sentiments. I
met Bianca while she was residing in a shelter.
She came to this shelter from a neighboring
state, hoping that distance would be the solution to the problem of her abusive ex-partner
stalking her. Bianca said that she experienced
both physical and emotional abuse from several partners in her life. These partners often
called her derogatory names and told her
that she was good for nothing. Not
428
surprisingly, this caused Bianca to experience

low self-esteem and depression. However,
Bianca found that she was able to increase
her positive self-esteem through the act of
prayer: It [prayer] was comforting. Made
me feel like I was young or something, something of value because I was talking to Him.
Made me feel like I be wanted when I aint
had nobody.
Thus, praying helped both Marianne and
Bianca deal with the assaults on their senses
of self-esteem by their abusive partners by
providing them with a readily available interaction with a trusted significant other who
considered them people of value. When interacting with God through prayer, they put
themselves in the role of the other and viewed
themselves as they believed God viewed
them. So, when Marianne interacted with
God, she saw herself as someone of value,
not as the scumbag that her abusive husband saw her as. Likewise, when Bianca
prayed she saw herself as someone of value
even when she believed she aint had
nobody in the concrete world. Both Marianne and Bianca used these positive
reflected appraisals to reevaluate their selves
in a more positive manner, which in turn
increased their self-esteem and lessened their
feelings of sadness and depression.
Providing a Sense of Protection through
Reinterpretive Cognitions
Many victims experienced a tremendous

amount of anxiety and fear when they were
in their abusive marriages. Violent episodes
were often unpredictable; victims often never
knew if and when their partners would become
violent, which caused a state of perpetual anxiety. Additionally, many victims experienced
constant threats of serious physical harm and
death from their abusers should they try to
leave. However, many victims were able to
deal with this fear by creating a perceived
sense of protection through their interactions
with God during prayer (21 percent).
One of the most common emotion management resources that individuals receive
when interacting with supportive others are
reinterpretive cognitions that make situations

seem less threatening (Hochschild 1983;
Smith and Kleinman 1993; Thoits 1984). A
common example of this is when an individual who has just lost his job uses a supportive
others statement that he will find another job
and that everything happens for a reason to
reinterpret his current joblessness as less
threatening. In the same way, many victims
came to reinterpret their abusive situations
as less threatening when interacting with
God through prayer. During this interaction,
victims beliefs that God cares about them,
has the power to protect them from any
harm that their abusers might inflict upon
them, and has the power to maintain their
selves if death should occur became cognitively salient. Victims, in turn, used these
salient beliefs to reinterpret their abusive situations as less threatening. This reinterpretation process gave victims a sense of
protection, and this perception helped lessen
their feelings of fear and anxiety. According
to some victims, this sense of protection
brought about through prayer gave them the
strength and courage to confront dangerous
situations and leave their abusive partners.
For some victims, prayer brought them
a sense of protection simply by making cognitively salient their belief in a loving, protective God. This belief, in turn, helped them
reinterpret their situations as less threatening.
Such was the case for Katelyn, a white thirtynine-year-old Catholic. Katelyn experienced
both physical and emotional abuse during
her marriage, which caused her to undergo
strong feelings of anxiety and fear. However,
Katelyn said that she found interacting with
God through prayer helpful in dealing with
these emotions because this interaction
made salient her belief that God would watch
over and protect her: One huge thing for me
is that it [prayer] helps, I feel part of Gods
plan, watched over, protected. . . . Um, so I,
I experienced, it feels to me, God working
in my life. . . . I become or gain the strength
to do what I need to. Thats, that helps me
a lot.
Other victims gained a sense of protection
through prayer by actually perceiving that

God helped and protected them from harm
when called upon through prayer. Many victims used the perception of a powerful significant other that would aid them in their time
of need; this led them to reinterpret their
situations as less threatening. For instance,
Samantha, a forty-seven-year-old white evangelical, said that she felt protected and thus
less afraid because she believed that God
answered her prayers concerning minor,
everyday matterssuch as making her automobile startto major matters such as stopping her husbands abusive behavior:
Well, when I was, like, getting hit in the
back of the head and everything, and thrown
into the front door and everything by him. .
.um, when I prayed about it, they stopped.
For other victims, prayer gave them a sense
of protection by making cognitively salient
their belief that they would continue to exist
in the afterlife if their abusers killed them.
That is, while interacting with God through
prayer many victims reminded themselves
of their belief that even if their physical
selves were to perish because of the actions
of their abusive partners, their selves nevertheless would continue to exist in the afterworld or other supernatural realms. This
belief helped victims reinterpret their situations as less inherently dangerous and thus
less fear provoking. For instance, Janine,
a forty-five-year-old Church of Christ member, explained that prayer helped her deal
with her fear because:
It put my mind more at peace that I knew if
he succeeded and he did actually kill me at
the time, that I knew that my heart and my
soul would go to God in heaven. You
know, my spirit would go to Him. That
they might kill my earthly body, but I would
be, you know, my soul would be in heaven
. . . . Cause I knew then, you know, my
mind was right with God. Didnt matter
whether his [my husbands] mind was right
with God or not, mine was. So if something
happened to me, I would see God in heaven,
you know, my daughter [who died in an
automobile accident when she was 18], so,
I wasnt concern no more about the physical
part anymore.
429
Evidence that a created sense of protection

through interaction with God actually lessened victims fear is apparent by the fact
that this sense of protection influenced their
actions. In particular, several of the victims
I interviewed said that the sense of protection
they got through prayer gave them the courage and strength to confront dangerous
situations and to leave their abusive partners.
For example, when Janine finally decided to
leave her abusive husband, he grabbed their
daughter and began screaming at the top of
his lungs that he was going to get his shotgun
and kill her, their children, and himself.
Despite the danger, Janine ran toward her
husband, snatched her daughter out of his
arms, and fled to her mothers house. When
I asked Janine where she got the courage to
do this, she said that it came from two
sources: the love of her children and the sense
of protection that she received through
prayer.
The sense of protection received through
prayer also gave Rhonda, a black Pentecostal
in her midforties, the courage to leave her
abusive partner. Rhonda lived with her abusive boyfriend for more than 10 years.
Throughout the relationship, Rhonda experienced a tremendous amount of unpredictable
physical and emotional abuse. Rhondas partner also threatened her with death if she ever
tried to leave him. Rhonda lost her courage
and strength while in her abusive relationship
because of intense feelings of fear. However,
she said that praying to God helped her get
her courage back, mostly by making cognitively salient her belief inculcated during
her religious upbringing of a protective God:
And I think during that time, God was yet
saying to me, Im right here. You know,
Im not going to let anything happen. I
believed that. Im not going to let him hurt
you. As many times as he, that he tells, tells
you hes gonna kill you, Im not gonna let
him kill you.
According to Rhonda, the sense of protection she received through prayer actually
helped her leave the abusive relationship.
430
Rhonda believes that God said to her through

prayer:
When you are ready to leave up out of this,
Im going yet be right here. I believed that,
because the night that I got the, the strength
and the, and the courage, cause I didnt
have any courage. All my courage was
gone. After I got this strength and the courage to leave, I could, I could really see God
helping me pack. He gave me how to stack
my stuff in the, in the closet, so if he [my
abusive partner] ever went into the room
he wouldnt see them. He gave me how to
stack stuff under my daughters bed. It
was His, it was His perfect plan for me to
leave there. Um, down to, um, getting, um,
the U-Haul truck. Never one time did the
people call and he answered the telephone.
Every time they called, I was always the
one that answered, you know, just verifying
you still need the truck for such and such
a day and that type of thing. So I believe
God order that.
Thus, Rhonda claims that the initial motivation for leaving came from the sense of
protection she elicited through her interactions with God. Rhonda reminded herself of
her belief in a protective, loving God through
prayer, which lessened her fear by providing
her with reinterpretive cognitions that she
used to perceive her situation as less threatening. By lessening her fear, this reinterpretation of her situation gave her the impetus to
take practical and strategic actions to leave
by diminishing the fear brought about by
her abusers threats against her life.
Zoning Out
Another way that prayer helped victims

manage negative emotions was by providing
them a way to zone out negative
emotion-inducing stimuli (16 percent). By interacting with God, victims were able to
ignore or distract themselves from the negative emotion-inducing stimuli endemic to episodes of marital conflict. By allowing them
to distract themselves from emotion-inducing
stimuli, zoning out helped victims manage
several types of negative emotions by
preventing them from occurring. Thus, unlike

other resources that helped victims manage
a particular negative emotion during or after
experiencing the emotion, zoning out prevented negative emotional experiences from
occurring in the first place by stopping negative stimuli from entering cognitive awareness. Moreover, prayer provided victims
with a resource they could use to distract
themselves in the immediate moment and
when other distractive resources were not
available. Zoning out through prayer also
helped victims not feel negative emotions and
not react with negative emotions that they felt
would exacerbate conflicts.
For instance, consider Nancy, a forty-fiveyear-old white Church of Christ member.
When I interviewed Nancy, she was still married to her abusive husband. Nancy told me
that her husband would argue and be emotionally abusive to her quite often. To deal
with the negative emotions that arose during
these abusive episodes, Nancy would interact
silently with God to distract herself from
the hurtful words of her husband. According
to Nancy, these interactions provided a neutral focal point that she could concentrate on
during these times of emotional crisis: I
think it helps you keep your sanity in the
midst of emotional crisis, turmoil. . . . it just
gives you a, kinda a neutral focal point that,
that, a place where you can go emotionally
and be calm in the midst of no calm.
Christine, a white Southern Baptist in her
midforties, also used prayer to zone out negative emotion-inducing stimuli during times
when her husband would become emotionally
abusive. Christine prevented herself from hearing her husbands verbal assaults by interacting with God through prayer. Zoning out in
turn lessened the negative emotions that she
otherwise would have felt if she had fully
heard her husband: I could kinda just sit there
and just, almost, like, zone out as if I wasnt
hearing it. It was just like it was coming to
me, but not really affecting me anymore.
Zoning out through prayer helped Christine
withhold her emotions during her husbands
verbal diatribes. According to Christine, early
in the marriage she would verbally fight

back when her husband would start yelling and
threatening her. In her view, this made her
husbands verbal abuse stronger, louder,
and more threatening. However, toward the
end of the marriage Christine began using interactions with God to zone out her husbands
tirades. She believes this helped deescalate
these situations:
I would pray during [the abusive episodes]
. . . that I, um, to, the strength to get through
it without getting to the point where he
could see that I would starting to go down.
Because as soon as he could see that I was
starting to get weary, that was when he
would just come on even stronger and stronger, louder and louderthreatening, more
threatening, whatever, so I would pray that
I would just have the strength to just withhold my emotion as it was, that I wouldnt
fight with him, that I wouldnt fall in the
whole trap of what he was trying to get
going. And I just kinda stayed calm. . . .
In fact, Christine believes that she would

have suffered much more emotional and
physical abuse without her ability to zone
out through prayer during these emotionally
abusive episodes:
I think that I, I think that I would have had,
if I would have kept up the cycles that I had
been there before, um, you know, the crying
and the weakness and the, all of that, I think
that the physical abuse probably would have
happened more often. Im pretty sure that
that would have. But the fact that I didnt
fall into the trap I think protected me from
a lot more physical abuse. Im pretty sure
of that. Um, cause I, I know that it, you
know, cause once you do that, I mean,
like I said, same thing of once you start yelling, its easier to yell. Once you start calling
somebody names, its easier to do that.
Once you start the physical, its just easier
to do it the next time round, next time
round. And, um, I think this just really
deterred him because I was throwing him
off his game. And he would just walk out.
In short, zoning out through prayer helped

victims manage emotions both directly and
indirectly. Directly, zoning out through prayer
431
provided victims with a way to distract themselves from the diatribes, hateful words, and
other negative emotion-inducing stimuli that
arose during violent episodes. Indirectly, victims found that zoning out through prayer
helped them not react in ways that might further exacerbate the violent episodes that were
eliciting the negative emotions.
Engendering Forgiving Attitudes by
Emulating God
The final way that interactions with God

through prayer helped victims manage negative emotions was by engendering forgiveness (13 percent). As noted earlier, victims
often were angry with their abusers for the
emotional and physical harm they caused.
While anger was ubiquitous during the relationships, many victims often harbored this
negative emotion years after their relationships ended. These feelings of anger during
and after the end of the relationship caused
additional emotional turmoil for many victims. However, several victims were able to
mitigate or let go of the anger they held
toward their current and previous abusive
partners by forgiving them. The act of forgiveness for others is the willful giving up
of resentment in the face of anothers (or others) considerable injustice and responding
with beneficence to the offender even though
that offender has no right to the forgivers
moral goodness (Baskin and Enright
2004:80). Research supports victims subjective feelings of the efficacy of forgiving others; several recent experimental and
correlation studies have found that individuals
who are able to forgive their transgressors
either on their own or through forgiveness
intervention therapiesreported increases in
positive self-esteem and happiness and decreases in negative emotions such as hate
and anger compared to those who are unable
or unwilling to forgive (e.g., Baskin and Enright 2004; Reed and Enright 2006).
According to several victims I interviewed, prayer was the source of their forgiving attitude toward their abusers. Caughey
(1984) persuasively argues that individuals
432
often use imaginary othersespecially media

figuresas role models to follow, and several
sociologists of emotion have shown that individuals often model their emotion management strategies after others whom they
perceive as helpful models for how to manage
emotions (e.g., Arluke 1994; Hochschild
1983; Smith and Kleinman 1989). In much
the same way, during their interactions with
God victims came to perceive God as an
exemplary model whom they could imitate
to manage their anger. That is, victims saw
God as someone who forgives offenses and
harms, and they adopted this stance toward
their abusers as a way to mitigate or let go
of the anger and resentment they held toward
their current and previous abusive partners.
For instance, Alicea fifty-seven-yearold white Catholicwas able to forgive her
abusive partner, and thus mitigate the anger
she felt toward him, through prayer. Alice
was married to her abusive husband for six
years. Alice experienced physical and emotional abuse throughout the marriage.
According to her, she was slapped, hit, or
kicked every week, and she was called derogatory terms like bitch almost on a daily
basis. Alices husband also threatened her
with a handgun several times and raped her
throughout the marriage. Alice told me that
she tried to do everything she could to make
her husband happy, but to no avail.
Alice eventually left her abusive husband
and attempted to move on with her life. She
harbored strong feelings of anger and resentment toward him long after the marriage
ended. These feelings enervated Alice and
caused her a significant amount of distress.
Through prayer, however, Alice engendered
in herself a sense of forgiveness that helped
her let go of the negative emotions she felt
toward her abusive husband:
Um, I think just praying and, um, coming to
a different understanding and conclusion
that I had, uh, when it was happening and
afterwards, and (sighs) finally being able
to let it go. Cause I [crying], for a time I
was so angry for such a long time. . . . Carrying around that hate takes up too much
energy and emotion. . . . [I] finally [got] to

a point where I could forgive that person. . . .
I asked Alice how prayer allowed her to

forgive her abusive husband. She said that
prayer helped her forgive her husband by reminding her of her belief in a forgiving God,
and she in turn used this as an exemplary
model to emulate: Praying and knowing
that God is a forgiving God and, and realizing
that I should do the same.
Engendering forgiveness through prayer
can be a double-edged sword, however, for
it can lead some victims to remain in abusive
relationships and/or cause them a great deal
of emotional turmoil. For example,
Charliea black Missionary Baptist in her
midfortiesexplained that her belief that
she should forgive her abusive partner kept
her in the relationship longer than she would
have otherwise: I like to give everybody the
benefit of the doubt, or give them a chance to
prove their selves, or to change. . . . Because
the Bible says, um, if, if somebody slap one
cheek, you turn it so they can slap the other.
So its like giving them a, a second chance.
Taraa fifty-one-year-old Pentecostal
expressed a similar idea:
I have to work with the forgiving thing,
because even with forgiving, Im thinking
you forgive, then youre supposed to just
keep trying the help. . . . But because I forgave him [my abusive partner], it, I felt like
I needed to give him another chance or
another opportunity to try to get it right
. . . I think at some point Im thinking,
{undecipherable} to be thinking Ive forgiven him because I have forgiven him,
uh, continue to try to work with him and
hope that spiritually he would come out it.
In short, engendering forgiveness through

prayer may have an unintended negative consequence for victims of abuse. For some, like
Charlie and Tara, engendering forgiveness
through prayer helped them reduce their
anger toward their abusive partners. However, this abatement of anger through prayer
inhibited these victims emotional motivation
to leave abusive relationships, thus furthering

their victimization. Accordingly, the ways
that victims deal with their emotions created
by their personal circumstances actually can
lead to consequences that cause additional
negative feelings, creating a vicious cycle
highlighted by other sociologists of emotions
(e.g., Hochschild 1983; Smith and Kleinman
1989; Thoits 1985).
PRAYER AND EMOTIONS: IMPLICATIONS
AND LIMITATIONS
In this article, I have argued that prayer

helps individuals manage negative emotions
because it is an imaginary social support
interaction that provides individuals with
resourcessuch as having someone to express
emotions or interact with during trying times,
positive reflected appraisals, and an exemplar
to imitatethey use to perform emotion management strategies. I have also argued that
individuals interact with God through prayer
for particular resources that will help them
manage specific negative emotions.
Although I have built my theoretical argument upon an analysis of the experiences of
female intimate partner abuse victims, it is
reasonable to believe that prayer provides
the same emotion management resources to
individualsboth men and womenin other
situations and contexts. For example, it is
possible that prayer provides a significant
other to whom one can express anger when
one is angry with someone but feels uncomfortable expressing these feelings to that person, such as when a man fears expressing his
anger toward his employer for fear of losing
his job. Additionally, praying during a natural
disaster such as a hurricane or because of the
threat of violence from strangers might provide individuals with cognitions that help
them feel protected, thus alleviating their
fear. Interacting with God might also provide
individuals with a way to zone out negative emotion-inducing stimuli during nonviolent interpersonal conflicts and episodes of
real or imagined danger. Also, interactions
with God provide readily available positive
reflected appraisals for anyone who is experiencing low self-esteem. It is my hope that
433
future researchers will attempt to evaluate

systematically these claims through additional empirical studies using a variety of
methodological tools.
Three additional points deserve consideration. First, the analysis shows that individuals do interact with imagined others to
manage their emotions. This finding suggests
that sociologists of emotion would do well to
investigate when and why individuals turn to
other types of imagined others to manage
negative emotions. What other types of imagined otherssuch as celebrities one has never
met, television characters, deceased relatives,
guardian angels, and imaginary friendsdo
individuals interact with to manage their negative emotions, why do they seek them out,
and when do they feel the need to turn to
them? Also, sociologists who study emotions
should identify what particular kinds of emotion management resources individuals
receive during interactions with other types
of imagined others.
Second, the management of emotions
through prayer has additional consequences
beyond simply coping with negative emotions. As shown above, managing emotions
through prayer was a double-edged sword in
that it had both positive and negative consequences for victims. On one edge of the
blade, overcoming fear through prayer gave
victims the courage to leave their abusive
partners, and, for others, it allowed them to
prevent the feeling of negative emotions
that would have exacerbated abusive episodes. On the other edge of the blade, using
prayer to engender forgiveness toward their
abusers hindered their emotional motivation
to end their victimization. These findings
highlight the need for future researchers to
focus on the non-emotional consequences of
using prayer to manage emotions.
Finally, the above analysis shows that
prayer as emotion management may and can
have a significant influence on social action.
Several recent studies have investigated the
impact of praying behavior on such things
as giving to charity, volunteering, and civic
action (e.g., Barnes 2005; Loveland et al.
2005; Ozorak 2003; Pattillo-McCoy 1998).
434
What has been missing from these studies,

however, are empirically based theories that
explain this relationship between prayer and
social action. The findings of this study, however, suggest that emotions might be a partial
explanation for these relationships. In several
of the cases presented in this article, the management of emotions through prayer had an
impact on victims actions toward their abusers. On the one hand, the use of prayer to
manage emotions of fear and anger helped
victims leave abusive relationships; on the
other hand, some victims said they stayed in
a relationship longer because of the sense of
forgiveness they felt by praying. If emotion
management through prayer can have a significant impact on the actions of abuse victims,
it is very possible that the emotions managed
or stimulated through prayer are at least a partial explanation for why people who pray
often also give more to charity, volunteer
more, or participate more in civic groups.
This study does have limitations. First, the
analysis presented in this article focuses
exclusively on the Judeo-Christian act of
prayer and conceptions of God. This limitation, however, is understandable given that
the majority of Americans affiliate with the
Christian tradition and/or get their spiritual
vocabulary and imagery mostly from the
Judeo-Christian tradition. Second, the findings are based on data from individuals
who experience a stressful negative life
event caused by significant others. It is
very possible individuals interact with God
for different emotion management resources
for events perceived as happening naturally,
by chance, or by ones own actions. Third, I
theorized how prayer helps individuals
manage emotions using the experiences of
individuals undergoing extreme stress. However, individuals deal with minor negative
emotions on an almost daily basis. Thus,
a question not answered here is if the ways
that prayer helps individuals manage emotions during times of crises are similar to
or different from the ways prayer helps during normal times. It is my hope that future
researchers will address these limitations in
subsequent work.
CONCLUSION: THE SOCIOLOGIAL IMPORTANCE

OF IMAGINED OTHERS
Individuals often interact with others for

resources that will help them manage negative emotions. However, they do not always
turn to concrete others. Sometimes individuals turn to imagined others, such as when
partner abuse victims turn to God for help
in dealing with their negative emotions.
Thus, the heretofore primary focus on concrete actors and significant others in the study
of emotion management and social support
only tells part of the story.
This primary focus on concrete others,
however, is not surprising. As Cerulo (2009)
points out, social scientists mostly focus on
social interactions between concrete actors.
However, there are several lines of theoretical
inquiryincluding actor network theory (Latour 2005), cultural anthropology (Caughey
1984), media studies (Giles 2002; Horton
and Wohl 1956), and microsociology (Cohen
1989; Pollner 1989)that have questioned
this focus and argue that individuals often
interact in everyday life with imagined others
(media and sports figures one has never met,
deities, guardian angels, saints, video avatars,
etc.). The findings of this article support this
questioning. As shown above, interactions
with God through prayer provide individuals
with resources that help them manage their
negative emotions; thus, the actor in this
imaginary social interaction has the ability
to make things happen in the lives of these
individuals (Cerulo and Barra 2008:378).
Social scientists would be wise to take these
imaginary interactions and imagined actors
theoretically and empirically seriously. Given
the increases in geographic mobility that take
people away from concrete loved ones and
the drastic dwindling of concrete social networks in recent years (McPherson, SmithLovin, and Brashears 2006), these imaginary
social interactions might be more numerous,
important, and consequential than scholars
currently realize (personal communication,
Deborah Carr 2009). Moreover, taking imaginary interactions seriously not only will
increase sociological knowledge of social

interactions and their consequences, it will do
analytic justice to W. I. Thomass (Thomas
and Thomas 1928) insight that when social
actors perceive objects and interactions as
real, they are real in their individual, sociological, and emotional consequences.
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Social Psychology

How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?

American Sociological Association

>> Version of Record - Dec 13, 2010

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Social Psychology Quarterly

How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?

any individuals manage negative

Higher Power when dealing with intense

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negative emotions, their explanations for how

term captures the notion that someone has

To understand prayer as an imaginary

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PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

I do not mean to question the subjective or objective

and shape individuals interactions with this

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might confront the source of negative

that explain how social support helps people

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PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

I use data from in-depth interviews with

Often called derogatory names and told that

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intimate partners, and five participants experienced sexual abuse.

I recruited participants from the middle

way to recruit participants would have made

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PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

interviews at various times chosen by participants. I had participants choose interview

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The most common emotion management

from someone she cared about deeply. I asked

When I asked Monica why it was important

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PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

Both Monica and Chamika point out the

could express these emotions to God without

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These feelings of shame and stigma often led

et al. 2000). Mental and physical relief

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PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

Thus, through the process of expressing her

Scholars from Cooley (1902) to Rosenberg

concrete actors over others, and individuals

Biancaa black Methodist in her

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surprisingly, this caused Bianca to experience

Many victims experienced a tremendous

reinterpretive cognitions that make situations

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PRAYER AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

Evidence that a created sense of protection

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