In the wake of religious conversions: Differences in cognition and emotion across three religious communities of an indigenous tribe in Malaysia.

Abstract

The Indigenous spirituality of a hunter-gatherer tribe (Temiar) of Peninsular Malaysia, in the Southeast Asian region, has been fractured by religious conversions into three religious communities-Traditional, Muslim, and Christian. Based on the theoretical framework of strong-ties and weak-ties rationalities (Sundararajan, 2020), this study explored the varying degrees of change in cognition and emotion when the kinship-based spirituality of Indigenous Temiar came under the influence, through conversion, of the globalizing world religions. Thirty-seven traditional-Temiar, 32 Temiar-Muslim, and 32 Temiar-Christian took part in the semistructured interviews which elicited suffering narratives. The transcripts were then translated and back-translated into English for psycholinguistic coding via Sundararajan-Schubert Word Count and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count on linguistic variables that operationalize the cognitive styles and emotional expression profiles. The between-group comparison revealed that traditional-Temiar and Temiar-Muslim groups retained much of the strong-ties cognitive styles of their ancestral niche, as evidenced by a significantly higher score in "collective self-representation" (e.g., we and they) compared to the Temiar-Christian group. For emotional processing, Temiar-Christians overall utilized significantly more "experience-distant modes" (e.g., intellectualization) of emotional expression than their counterparts. This mixed-method study showcased the Indigenous spirituality of an understudied tribe (Temiar) in Peninsular Malaysia. It demonstrated that changes in cognition and emotion can happen within a single generation if the conversion entails systematic weakening of strong-ties rationality, whereas if the conversion is friendly to the kinship-based infrastructures of traditional societies, converts may retain much of the traditional strong-ties rationality. This documentation of stability as well as change of an Indigenous spirituality can shed some light on the resilience and challenges of traditional strong-ties societies in the globalizing era.

The Environmental Model of Mindfulness

“…Over the past two decades, some Temiar have converted to Christianity, and this has resulted in the Christian Temiar having a more independent form of self-construal and, importantly, an associated change in cognitive style from more concrete/presentoriented to more abstract/future-oriented. As Thong et al (2023) concludes:…”

“…How the self is construed has a strong influence on various cognitive processes, including how attention is oriented and how emotions are experienced (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Lillard, 1998;Luhrmann et al, 2011), and even a person's level of trait mindfulness (Jankowski et al, 2022). Research has also shown that a person's selfconstrual can change: for example, when moving to a new culture (Berry et al, 2006;Sam & Berry, 2010;Chen et al, 2015), as a result of religious conversion (Thong et al, 2023;Winchester, 2015;Snook et al, 2019;Luhrmann et al, 2011;Robbins, 2004), or even as a community adopts modern technology (Hansen et al, 2012). Given that different forms of self-construal are associated with differences in how an individual processes information and are also cultivated by, and adaptive in, different environments, the construal of the self has also been referred to as a type of cognitive style (Yu, 2021).…”

“…Other supporting research has shown how changes in selfconstrual lead to these proposed changes in trait mindfulness. For example, the Temiar, an indigenous group living on the fringes of the rainforest in northern Malaysia, traditionally have a self-construal that perceives of the forest and natural surroundings as a core part of their identity (Benjamin, 2014), and have also been described as using a more concrete and externally focused cognitive style (Thong et al, 2023). Over the past two decades, some Temiar have converted to Christianity, and this has resulted in the Christian Temiar having a more independent form of self-construal and, importantly, an associated change in cognitive style from more concrete/presentoriented to more abstract/future-oriented.…”

An Ontological Turn for Psychology in the Age of the Machine and Global Warming

“…In the remainder of this essay, I present a tapestry of Indigenous accounts of ecological grief based on two strands of ethnography. One strand comes from Hernandez’s (2022) studies of Indigenous peoples in Latin America; the other strand consists of excerpts from interviews (Thong et al, 2023) with a hunter gatherer tribe of the Orang Asli in Malaysia. With a population estimate of 146,412, the Orang Asli are the earliest dwellers of Peninsular Malaysia.…”

A systematic review on the cultural factors associated with stigma during pandemics

“…Values such as collectivism are privileged among strong-ties dominant societies, while individualism is privileged among weak-ties dominant societies (Sundararajan & Yeh, 2021). Research has also identified some associations between certain religions or ethnicities that historically embody kinship and bloodline as important and their members being more dominant in strong-ties rationality (Thong et al, 2022;Ting & Zhang, 2021;Yeh et al, 2022).…”