NUM194 [Experiments show] that what makes the difference to the way we behave is not simply what we believe, but rather the fact of being reminded of it. In one test, conducted by Brandon Randolph-Seng and Michael Nielsen, participants were exposed to words flashed for less than 100 milliseconds, that is, long enough to be detected by the brain but not long enough for conscious awareness. They were then given a test in which they had the opportunity to cheat. Those who had been shown words relating to God were significantly less likely to do so than people who had been shown neutral words. The same result was yielded by another test in which, beforehand, some of the participants were asked to recall the Ten Commandments while others were asked to remember the last ten books they had read. Merely being reminded of the Ten Commandments reduced the tendency to cheat. Another researcher, Deepak Malhotra, surveyed the willingness of Christians to give to online charitable appeals. The response was 300% greater if the appeal was made on a Sunday then on any other day of the week. Clearly the participants did not change their minds about religious belief or the importance of charitable giving between weekdays and Sundays. It was simply that on Sundays they were more likely to have thought about God. A similar test was carried out among Muslims in Morocco, where it was found that people were more likely to give generously to charity if they lived in a place where they could hear the call to prayer from a local minaret. [Ara] Norenzayan's [author of Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 13-54)] conclusion is that "religion is more in the situation than in the person," or, to put it another way, what makes the difference to our behavior is less what we believe than the phenomenon of being reminded, even subconsciously, of what we believe. That is precisely the psychology behind the mitzvah of tzizit in Parashat Shelah [this verse]. The Talmud (Menahot 44a) tells the story of a man who, in a moment of moral weakness, decided to pay a visit to a certain courtesan. He was in the course of removing his clothes when he saw the tzitzit and immediately froze. The courtesan asked him what was the matter, and he told her about the tzitzit, saying that the four fringes had become accusing witnesses against him for the sin he was about to commit. The woman was so impressed by the power of this simple command that she converted to Judaism.