East Asian Religious Tolerance—A Myth or a Reality? Empirical Investigations of Religious Prejudice in East Asian Societies

Abstract

Is East Asian religious tolerance, as opposed to Western monotheistic prejudice, a stereotype or a reality? Based on theoretical and empirical evidence, we hypothesized low prejudice as a function of East Asian religiosity. We examined whether this holds true for interreligious, anti-atheist, ethnic, and anti-gay prejudice. In Study 1, analysis of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2008 data from Eastern religious and Christian samples in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (total N = 3,555) showed, contrarily to Christians, high interreligious tolerance and weaker if no anti-gay prejudice as a function of Eastern religiosity. In Study 2, Eastern religiosity among Taiwanese (n = 222) was negatively related to prejudice against various religious outgroups (except atheists), especially among those low in authoritarianism. In Study 3, Eastern religiosity among Taiwanese (n = 102) was negatively related to implicit interreligious (Muslims) and ethnic (Africans) prejudice; prosociality partially mediated the former association. Eastern religious tolerance seems to be true, but not unlimited.

Buddhist Concepts as Implicitly Reducing Prejudice and Increasing Prosociality

“…Note that positive links between religiosity among Eastern Asians (mostly Buddhists) and tolerance were established in a recent series of studies (Clobert, Saroglou, Hwang, & Soong, 2014). Among Eastern Asians (mainly Buddhists), high religiosity was found to predict high explicit inter-religious tolerance and a lack of, or weaker, antigay prejudice relative to Christians (Study 1), decreased explicit prejudice against various religious outgroups, except atheists (Study 2), and low implicit inter-religious and ethnic prejudice (Study 3).…”

“…Evidence suggests that high versus low prejudice is a common global tendency toward a variety of targets (Akrami, Ekehammar, & Bergh, 2011) even if distinct psychological processes may be involved in prejudice toward specific targets (e.g., Asbrock, Sibley, & Duckitt, 2010). Nevertheless, a clearer effect on weak prejudice was expected for prejudice against religious and ethnic outgroups, given previous correlational evidence on Eastern Asian religiosity and prejudice (Clobert et al, 2014) as well as an experiment where Buddhist primes decreased ethnic prejudice among Westerners (Clobert & Saroglou, 2013). However, our hypothesis was less obvious with regard to antigay prejudice.…”

Muslim Students and Attitudes toward Gay Men

“…Unlike gender, the facts show that religiosity is consistently associated with homophobia. A number of researchers found a negative relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward homosexuals (Hinrichs and Rosenberg, 2002;Gelbal and Duyan, 2006;Rowatt et al, 2009;Sherkat et al, 2009;Cunningham and Melton, 2012;Clobert et al, 2014;Cragun and Sumerau, 2014;Decoo, 2014;Henshaw, 2014;Kuptsevych, 2014;Gilad and Stepanova, 2015).…”

Dakwah dalam Mewujudkan Interaksi dan Kerukunan Antar Umat Beragama Di Palopo Sulawesi Selatan

“…Toleransi agama Asia Timur, yang bertentangan dengan prasangka monoteis Barat, stereotip atau kenyataan? Berdasarkan bukti teoretis dan empiris, bahwa hasil hipotesanya ternyata Asia Timur memiliki prasangka rendah sebagai fungsi dari religiositas dilihat dari prasangka antar agama, anti-ateis, etnis, dan anti-gay (Clobert, Saroglou, Hwang, & Soong, 2014). Begitu juga Papua Barat yang sering dikenal sebagai miniatur Indonesia.…”