RESEARCH: Being Buddhist in Western Europe: Cognitive Needs, Prosocial Character, and Values

Empirical evidence from a variety of monotheistic religious denominations allows for some solid conclusions regarding personality characteristics (prosociality), cog-nitive structure (need for closure), and importance of values (Schwartz’s model) as-sociated with religiousness. In this study, 105 Belgian Buddhists were administered the Need for Closure Scale, the Schwartz Value Survey, NEO-PI-R items measuring facets of agreeableness, and measures of investment in Buddhism. Similarly to other religions, participants with high investment in Buddhism tended to attribute low im-portance to hedonism, power, and achievement, and to value tradition, conformity, and benevolence, as well as to report high agreeableness. However, contrary to other studies, these participants were not high in need for closure and security, they did not depreciate self-direction and stimulation, and they valued universalism. The discus-sion integrates the findings into three main theoretical issues of the psychology of re-ligious and spiritual personality: need for personal and social order, in-group limited or extended prosociality, and need for self-mastery. Most empirical research in psychology of religious personality has been based on Christian participants; only few studies exist based on Muslims, Jews, or ad-herents to Eastern religions. There is indeed an important need for testing generalizability of findings or considering cross-religious and cross-cultural dif-ferences.