Intercultural non-conscious influences: Prosocial effects of Buddhist priming on Westerners of Christian tradition

Prosocial concepts and behavior are often found to be activated when participants are primed with concepts of their own religious cultural tradition. We investigated whether similar effects can be found when people (Westerners of Christian tradition) are primed with concepts of a different from their own religious cultural tradition (Buddhist and Islamic). Participants (104 young Belgian adults) were randomly assigned to three conditions. They were supraliminally primed with either Buddhist or Islamic images; or they were not primed (control condition). Priming Buddhism increased prosocial intentions (spontaneous sharing of hypothetical gains), and decreased, among participants highly valuing universalism, implicit prejudice toward an ethnic outgroup. Priming Islam had no effect on prosociality or prejudice. The findings suggest that concepts from one religious and cultural context are transposable, under some conditions, to another religious and cultural context and can influence even implicit social cognition.

► Buddhist primes increase Westerners’ prosociality – spontaneous sharing of gains.
► Buddhist primes decrease among universalistic Westerners implicit ethnic prejudice.
► Religious ideas non-consciously shape behavior in a different from the origin culture.