Psychology and Religion: Fighting Words or Call for Détente?

Presenting specialty literature background in: organic chemistry, neurology, theology and clinical psychology, in order to conceptualize and bring to the forefront the interdependency between organic chemistry, neurology, psychology and religion in describing the implications of religious thinking in therapeutic compliance is a first objective of the present paper. As such, we addressed the importance of neurotransmitters in the neurophysiology of spiritual interventions. Another specific objective was defined as measuring psychological reactions, components of the moral and religious structure of human personality, with the help of psychophysiological involved factors, in rapport with therapeutic compliance. According to the descriptive statistic of data, we found that those who do not adhere to any religious cult have greater chances of being diagnosed with a disease that necessitates daily treatment and monitoring (the percentage found was 20%), in comparison with those who are part of a religious cult (6.67 %). The estimated non-linear regression model to confirm the interdependency between the medial psychophysiological reactivity to religious stimulus and the medial score obtained in the compliance questionnaire was validated by the values of R = 0.99 and p-value=0.00≈10-10<0.05). As such, we can accept the hypothesis that “there is a statistically significant association between religious thinking and compliance”. On the other hand, the hypothesis “there is a statistically significant association between religious thinking and compliance” was validated, using the t test, only at 40%, as the results of the t test were only considered on significant components of the applied MARS questionnaire. The results given by approaching the two hypotheses through the mixture of psychophysiological and application of the MARS questionnaire consistently highlighted an image of importance of religious thinking in therapeutic compliance. The current study is useful in motivating adherents of any religion, in our study, the Christian belief, to improve their compliance. Keywords: oxcytocin, vassopressin, MARS scale, therapeutic compliance, religious experience

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