Influence of Religion on Prosociality: A Priming Study of Buddhist Concepts among Nonbelievers in China

ABSTRACT

From a theoretical perspective, there is consensus that religion is positively associated with prosocial behaviors. However, rather little is known about whether religion can increase the accessibility of prosocial concepts among nonbelievers. In the current study, we explored the influence of religion on the accessibility of such concepts among nonbelievers of Buddhism using supraliminal and subliminal priming techniques. Specifically, we employed 20 each of Buddhist and neutral words as priming stimuli, along with 20 each of prosocial and antisocial words as target stimuli. Participants were asked to determine, as quickly and as accurately as possible, if a presented word had a prosocial or antisocial meaning. In Study 1, participants were supraliminally primed (200 ms) with Buddhist words. The results showed that participants recognized prosocial words more quickly than they did antisocial words when primed with Buddhist words than with neutral words. In Study 2, we used subliminal priming (38 ms), and obtained the same results as in Study 1. Taken together, the results suggest that Buddhist concepts, whether primed explicitly or implicitly, increased the mental accessibility of prosocial concepts.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Notes

1. We conducted a questionnaire survey (http://www.wjx.cn) to better understand the religiosity of Han Chinese nonbelievers. We measured individual differences in religiosity using a four-item index as follows: “Do you have any religious beliefs? (1 = none, 2 = Buddhism, 3 = other)”; “Have you ever been to a temple? (1 = none, 2 = passively visited, 3 = actively visited)”; “If you did visit a temple, would you participate in activities related to Buddhism? (1 = no, 2 = passively participate, 3 = actively participate)”; and “Buddhism has an impact on your values in life (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree).” There were 157 individuals who volunteered to participate in this survey. We excluded from our data analyses 26 participants who self-identified as religious believers (Buddhism or other), with the rest reporting themselves to be nonbelievers. The results showed that 72.5% of nonbelievers self-reported they had been to a temple, 87% of nonbelievers self-reported they would participant in Buddhism-related activities if they ever visited a temple, and 74.8% of nonbelievers thought that Buddhism had an impact on their life values.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was funded by the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities, 2016 [No.16JJD190002]; Research on the psychological mechanism and development of belief in communism among adolescents [2017WT015]; the project from Social Science Judge of Hunan [XSP18YBZ117]; and the Innovation Project of the Graduate School of South China Normal University.