Dr. David DeSteno

85% to zero.

Well, in that study, they were told they had to do what the coin said.

So what the coin flipper said, so the average cheating rate was like 25 or 30%.

It went down to 2%.

Right?

Still a market change.

Still a market change.

And I'm sure in the other one it would drop.

If we did it the other way, it would drop dramatically too.

We find that when we give people the opportunity to help someone else who is asking for help, a stranger they don't know, if they feel grateful, they're much more likely to do it.

And we can do it in such a way that we can titrate the level of gratitude they're feeling to the amount of help they're giving.

And so what's happening here is...

Religions cultivate, they curate our emotional lives.

What do people do when they pray?

A lot of prayer, the most common prayer is a prayer of gratitude.

If you are experiencing gratitude more frequently in your day,

it puts you in a position where you are being nudged from the bottom up to be more willing to be honest, patient, generous, and helpful to other people.

And so what's going on?

The gratitude that you're feeling is putting your body in a state where the brain wants to be more pro-social.

The same time you're praying, you're getting the message, hey, you should be more pro-social.