Perceiving Self, Others, and Events through a Religious Lens: Mahayana Buddhists vs. Christians

• Main Authors: Yi-Hao Wang, 王翊豪
• Other Authors: Tsung-Ren Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/yq5qxx

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 105 === Are all religions essentially the same? Are believers of different religions heading in the same mental direction? To answer these questions from a sociopsychological perspective on the effects of religious beliefs, we compared social sensitivity and its closely related causal attribution style between 200 Mahayana Buddhists, who practiced unbiased love and compassion toward every being, and 200 Christians, who followed the path of and pursued union with God. With a similar cultural background, sex ratio, age distribution, socioeconomic status, and fluid intelligence level, Taiwanese Mahayana Buddhists and Christians in our study showed opposite tendencies when inferring mental states of others—As religiosity increased, overall theory of mind increased in Mahayana Buddhists and yet decreased in Christians. Meanwhile, these two religious groups showed opposite tendencies of attributional style—As religiosity increased, self-serving bias decreased in Buddhists and yet increased in Christians. These marked religiosity-dependent, sociopsychological differences between Mahayana Buddhists and Christians suggest that different religions shape mind and behavior differently and can lead their followers towards quite distinct mental directions.