基督徒好社交、佛教徒好思考：信眾的語言使用分析

Abstract

不同宗教的信徒是否有不同的社交型態及認知、情緒樣態？雖然已有眾多研究指出信仰宗教者比不信教者能更好地調節負向情緒，也有更多的社交互動與正向情緒，不同宗教可能帶來的影響卻鮮為人知。本研究利用社群媒體推特上的大量語言資料，分析美國基督教徒與美國佛教徒使用社交、認知與情緒相關詞彙的差異，發現基督徒較佛教徒使用較多的社交詞彙以及較少的認知相關詞彙，然而兩者在情緒詞上卻沒有使用差異。為了尋找此語言使用差異的可能原因，本研究分析熱門的基督教聖經與佛教經典，發現了經典用詞和其信眾呈現同樣樣態：聖經也比佛經使用更多社交詞彙與較少認知詞彙。不同宗教信徒及其閱讀之經典的用詞差異，顯示了不同宗教的教義可能透過經典直接且異質地影響其信徒的心理特性，並反映在他們的日常語言使用上。

Are different religions associated with different social, cognitive, and emotional styles? Although the worldwide major religions are known to encourage social interactions and help regulate emotions, it is unclear to what extent adherents of various religions differ in these dimensions. We observed quantitative differences in language use between Christians and Buddhists on Twitter and found the possible source of these differences in religious sacred texts. On Twitter, Christians used more social-interaction-related words and fewer reasoning-related words than Buddhists, but they did not differ in the amount of emotion expressions. We found a mirrored pattern between language use on Twitter and in the Bible and the Buddhist sacred texts, which suggested that adherents might be influenced by the religious texts they read. This study provided an example to the understudied area of behavioral differences between adherents in various religions in a natural, experimenter-free setting.