Study Reveals Exposure to Buddhism Can Have Powerful Effects on Your Outlook on Life
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Buddhism has long been called a path to enlightenment, but a new study reveals you don’t need to travel very far down that road to get some of its benefits.
The study, which involved 355 participants ranging from Christian Westerns to Taiwanese residents and three separate experiments, found exposure to Buddhist words like “nirvana” and “dharma” can lead to increased tolerance and prosocial behavior. It additionally found such words improved prosociality more than general words with positive associations, such as “freedom.”
The study also found that exposing respondents, including Christians, to comparable Christian concepts did not improve tolerance levels. The researchers posited that “Unlike Christian and other monotheistic religious systems that paradoxically seem to encourage not only prosociality but also prejudice, Buddhist ideas favor both prosociality and outgroup tolerance…”
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