Is Buddha tolerant? East Asian religions, prejudice and prosociality

The link between religion and prosociality but also, paradoxically, many kinds of prejudice has been established for decades. However, researchers in that field conducted their investigations only in Western cultural and religious contexts. Do these findings also hold for Eastern religions and Asian cultures? Across ten studies, we demonstrated that the paradoxical relation between religion and both prosociality and prejudice is not universal. We consistently found that East Asian religiosity and religious concepts promote not only prosociality but also tolerance (low prejudice) toward ethnic and religious outgroups. A greater tolerance of contradiction and compassion seem to explain the positive impact of East Asian religions. It is our impression that this dissertation contributes significantly to the body of research in cross-cultural psychology as well as in psychology of religion. It reminds us the importance of a better understanding of how prejudiced attitudes emerge across and between religious and cultural contexts.