Abstract
ABSTRACT Why do people pray? In this paper, we suggest another important dimension of prayer, namely that prayer is a form of collaborative problem solving. In this paper, we use both qualitative evidence drawn from interviews and quantitative evidence from a survey and an experiment to show that people use prayer to solve practical problems in their lives. We also argue that the informal and personal ways in which people address God in prayer put God into the role of collaborator in their problem solving. This paper argues that not only do people solve practical problems in prayer, but also that there is a training effect of prayer—namely that with experience, prayer is perceived to be more efficacious as a problem-solving process.
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