Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies
Are different religions associated with different social, cognitive, and emotional tendencies? Although major world religions are known to encourage social interactions and help regulate emotions, it is less clear to what extent adherents of various religions differ in these dimensions in daily life...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2019-02-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00113/full |
| _version_ | 1818047021879132160 |
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| author | Chih-Yu Chen Tsung-Ren Huang Tsung-Ren Huang |
| author_facet | Chih-Yu Chen Tsung-Ren Huang Tsung-Ren Huang |
| author_sort | Chih-Yu Chen |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Are different religions associated with different social, cognitive, and emotional tendencies? Although major world religions are known to encourage social interactions and help regulate emotions, it is less clear to what extent adherents of various religions differ in these dimensions in daily life. We thus carried out a large-scale sociolinguistic analysis of social media messages of Christians and Buddhists living in the United States. After controlling for age and gender effects on linguistic patterns, we found that Christians used more social words and fewer cognitive words than Buddhists. Moreover, adherents of both religions, similarly used more positive than negative emotion words on Twitter, although overall, Christians were slightly more positive in verbal emotional expression than Buddhists. These sociolinguistic patterns of actual rather than ideal behaviors were also paralleled by language used in the popular sacred texts of Christianity and Buddhism, with the exception that Christian texts contained more negative and fewer positive emotion words than Buddhist texts. Taken together, our results suggest that the direct or indirect influence of religious texts on the receivers of their messages may partially, but not fully, account for the verbal behavior of religious adherents. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-10T09:59:10Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-df65248a62864365a9d28d86da72c4ff |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-10T09:59:10Z |
| publishDate | 2019-02-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-df65248a62864365a9d28d86da72c4ff2022-12-22T01:53:24ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782019-02-011010.3389/fpsyg.2019.00113388345Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional TendenciesChih-Yu Chen0Tsung-Ren Huang1Tsung-Ren Huang2Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, TaiwanDepartment of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, TaiwanCenter for Research in Econometric Theory and Applications, National Taiwan University, Taipei, TaiwanAre different religions associated with different social, cognitive, and emotional tendencies? Although major world religions are known to encourage social interactions and help regulate emotions, it is less clear to what extent adherents of various religions differ in these dimensions in daily life. We thus carried out a large-scale sociolinguistic analysis of social media messages of Christians and Buddhists living in the United States. After controlling for age and gender effects on linguistic patterns, we found that Christians used more social words and fewer cognitive words than Buddhists. Moreover, adherents of both religions, similarly used more positive than negative emotion words on Twitter, although overall, Christians were slightly more positive in verbal emotional expression than Buddhists. These sociolinguistic patterns of actual rather than ideal behaviors were also paralleled by language used in the popular sacred texts of Christianity and Buddhism, with the exception that Christian texts contained more negative and fewer positive emotion words than Buddhist texts. Taken together, our results suggest that the direct or indirect influence of religious texts on the receivers of their messages may partially, but not fully, account for the verbal behavior of religious adherents.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00113/fullreligionChristianityBuddhismsociolinguisticssocial interactioncognition |
| spellingShingle | Chih-Yu Chen Tsung-Ren Huang Tsung-Ren Huang Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies Frontiers in Psychology religion Christianity Buddhism sociolinguistics social interaction cognition |
| title | Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies |
| title_full | Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies |
| title_fullStr | Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies |
| title_full_unstemmed | Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies |
| title_short | Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies |
| title_sort | christians and buddhists are comparably happy on twitter a large scale linguistic analysis of religious differences in social cognitive and emotional tendencies |
| topic | religion Christianity Buddhism sociolinguistics social interaction cognition |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00113/full |
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