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The Survey about Differences in Religiousness and Conversion among Buddhists, and an Explore of Buddhism’s Mental Health Function

Author: XueHuiMin
Tutor: GeLuJia
School: Jilin University
Course: Applied Psychology
Keywords: Religiousness Conversion Ponder Buddist Meditation
CLC: B948
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 382
Quote: 2
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Abstract

The Survey about Differences in Religiousness and Conversion among Buddhists, and an Explore of Buddhism’s Mental Health FunctionAs the most influential religion in Chinese society, Buddhism has got a rapid development in this era. Much more people decide to become Buddhists although most of them have received science education for years. This phenomenon indicates a fact that members of our society feel unsatisfied with this living situation,which is fulled with competition and press.People believe that the religion can free themselves from these troubles and make them feel better.That’s why they convert to Buddhism.In different research fields, Chinese and foreign scholars have advanced theories about religious revival. But a survey on the reasons that make people decide convert to Buddhism would be a key evidence.It will help us to analysis the internal mechanism that exists in the believers’mind.In the field of psychology, tools that can be used to survey the reasons for the conversion are failing. Based on literature analysis, our study has developed the "Conversion’s Reasons Survey" and "Buddhist’s Religiousness Scale". Next, by analyzing the date that researcher had got from four groups of Buddhists, researcher discovered that different believers own different reasons for conversion. Combined with qualitative researches, researcher described the details of these differences and cleared the causes that lead to this appearance.The whole research has got Conclusions as follows.(1) Conversion is a psychological and behavioral identity which people can use to make sure of their religious beliefs. And conversion is a kind of standard identify.There are many reasons that can bring people’s conversion decision.And these reasons play the different roles between monks and laymen.When monks convert to Buddhism,they are promoted by the attractiveness derived from Buddhism’s ideology.But when laymen convert to buddhism,they hope to get helps from the Buddha.Most monks grow up in the families which have Buddhism traditions,while the laymen’s families don’t have it.Most laymen access to the Buddhism in an occasional cases.What’s more,Personality test results also show that the Buddhists’psychoticism scores keep on a lower level, and neuroticism scores of monk are significantly lower than the laymen, that means the monks’emotional relative seems to be more peaceful. These results show that religious conversion based on certain kind of personality.(2) Buddhist’s religiousness means one’s own attitude towards Buddhism and the psychological characteristics including cognitive, emotional and behavioral religion. Rational cognition means recognition of the Buddhism theories about the whole world. Emotional experience indicates Buddhist’s feeling of Buddha and monks.And the last dimension is designed for measuring believer’s observable behavior in religious activities such as prayer and chanting.The"Buddhist’s Religiousness Scale" consists of 12 questions, each dimension includes four items from a subscale. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the revised model is satisfactory in a number of fix indicators. The result of cronbach alpha test was 0.879 and split-half reliability was 0.752. All the statistical results indicated a fact that the reliability and validity of this test scale achieved a good standard.(3) By surveying " Buddhist’s Religiousness Scale" and " Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale", the results of statistical analysis have shown that the rational cognition and observable behavior scores from monks are significantly higher than laymen, while the emotional experience scores from monks are significantly lower than laymen.What’s more,although monks performance the higher level in their religiousness on the whole,there are gender differences between male monks and nuns.Male monks appear to be more rational while nuns appear to be more sensiblity. This differences are mainly determined by gender characteristics. When the survey came to analyze the results from self-esteem scale, it could be found that monks’self-esteem scores are significantly higher than laymen. It may be because the monks can get a more correct understanding of Buddhism theories. And these theories can help them to improve their mental health and self-esteem.(4) Finally, researcher attempted to discover how the Buddhism could promote its believers’mental health by studying Buddhism theory and technique.There are various kinds of mental health components hidden in the Buddhism.Take pondering Buddist and meditation for example, ponder Buddist has been proved to be very useful for causing realization,and the meditation has been widely adoptde to relax the body or calm dowm.They can help people change the diseased cognition and behavior, recover from overwhelming force. Rich psychological value of these great ideas and specific techniques about Buddhism has now been recognized by many psychologists. In the future, the local psychology should learn from Buddhism so that we can create a new mental health education and counseling doctrine which will be more suitable for Chinese people.

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