The Influence Of Buddhist Initiation On Prosociality In The Context Of Chinese Culture

“Religious prosociality hypothesis” supposes that religion can promote prosocial behavior and willing.Although there are some controversies on “religious prosociality hypothesis”,many studies support the hypothesis,especially the religion prime which even prove the causality from religion to prosociality at some extent.Review present research,it not difficult to find that the samples mostly are from undergraduates in Western culture and mostly almost are religion believers.Thus we cannot get any conclusion about whether the religious prime can improve prosocial behaviors of nonreligious group by combining religious and nonreligious group.Thus,this study aimed the nonreligious undergraduate,used explicit priming,implicit priming,and contextual priming to explore the impact mechanism in the improvement of Buddhism prime on prosocial willing and behaviors of nonreligious,basing Chinese culture.This study comprised three experiments.Pilot experiment used the explicit priming based on reading holy texts to exam the effect of Buddhism prime on prosocial willing and behaviors as well as the mediate effects of awe and smell-self in this process,and found that the improvement of Buddhism prime on prosociality and the mediate effects of awe but not smell-self in this process.Experiment 1 used the implicit priming based on sentence-unscrambling tasks to exam the moderate effect of Karma belief and Paranormal beliefs on the mediate effects of awe in the Buddhism-prosociality relationship,and the results failed to support any effect including main effect of prime,mediate effects of awe,and moderate effect because the no-solidity of implicit religion priming.Experiment 2 used the contextual priming to validate the result of Pilot experiment and repeat the aim of Experiment1,and found that moderate effect of Karma belief not Paranormal beliefs on the mediate effects of awe in the Buddhism-prosociality relationship,as well as repeated the result of Pilot experiment.The present research show that(1)the level of prosocial prosocial willing and behavior of nonreligious in Buddhism prime group is significantly higher than that in neutral primegroup,meaning that Buddhism prime can promote the prosocial willing and behavior of the nonreligious;(2)in nonreligious group,Buddhism prime improve prosocial willing and behavior via awe;(3)the karma belief moderate the mediate effect of awe on the Buddhism-prime and prosociality relationship.specially,in the group of low karma belief,Buddhism prime improve prosocial willing and behavior via awe,while in the group of high karma belief the mediate effect of awe on the Buddhism-prime and prosociality relationship is not significant.