The Effects of Buddhist Religiosity and Aspects on Prosociality

Abstract

ABSTRACT Religion prosociality hypothesis, which predicts that religion promotes prosocial behaviors, has been verified by previous empirical research. However, the religion in the previous studies investigating Eastern religions has often been examined as a single and unified concept. In the current study, based on a few studies in the context of Western religions, we considered the religiosity as a complex construct and investigated the influence of Buddhist religiosity and primed Buddhist and Christian aspects on prosociality through two studies. In Study 1, participants’ prosocial tendencies were measured by the Prosocial Tendencies Measure (PTM). In Study 2, we employed a subliminal priming task to investigate the effects of aspects of Buddhist and Christian traditions on prosociality measured by self-reports with explicit requests for donating money amount in nonbelievers. The results of Study 1 revealed that Buddhist believers exhibited more prosocial tendencies than nonbelievers, and female participants exhibited more prosocial tendencies than male participants. Study 2’s results showed that the Buddhist and Christian priming groups exhibited more prosocial intentions than the neutral priming group. Furthermore, for the group primed with the Buddhist words, the aspect of the spiritual activated more prosocial intentions than did the aspect of the agents and institutional. Taken together, these findings suggest that Buddhism, especially the spiritual component of Buddhism, increased prosocial tendencies.