Harmony Between Humanity and Nature: Natural Vs. Synthetic Drug Preference in Chinese Atheists and Taoists

Abstract

A commonplace observation across many cultures is that humans show a strong preference for natural items on drug choice in the medical domain. Despite an emerging line of psychological research on individual differences in the naturalness-is-better bias, few studies have focused on the role of religious beliefs. According to the core idea of Taoism, people should free themselves from selfishness and desire and behave in concert with the alternating cycles of Nature. Based on the findings regarding the positive relationship between connectedness to nature and naturalness preference, we predict that Taoists, who emphasize harmony between humanity and nature, should show a stronger naturalness-is-better bias than atheists on drug choice due to their higher level of natural connectedness. The results showed that both Chinese atheists and Taoists selected a natural over synthetic drug even though the safety and efficacy of the medicines were described as identical. More importantly, the naturalness-is-better bias is more pronounced in Taoists than atheists. These data suggest that religious beliefs related to individuals’ connectedness to nature may moderate the naturalness-is-better bias in health decisions.

Religiosity and the Naturalness Bias in Drug and Vaccine Choices

“…1 The results of Study 1 revealed that participants were biased in preferring the natural versus synthetic drug even though the two drugs were said to be identical in terms of safety and effectiveness. This finding replicates past work (e.g., Cao & Li, 2021;Meier & Lappas, 2016;Meier et al, 2019b). More importantly, we extended this work by revealing that belief in God was related to this bias as people who reported a higher belief in God also had a higher natural drug bias, and people who reported a lower belief in God had a lower natural drug bias.…”

“…These effects were replicated in behavioral choices, and the authors also found that the natural drug bias could be reduced with a rational appeal (Meier et al, 2019b). The studies examined U.S. participants, but other work has conceptually replicated these effects in Chinese samples (Cao & Li, 2021;Li & Cao, 2020, 2022. Research has also shown that physicians can be susceptible to the natural drug bias as well (Lappas et al, in press).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, only one study has examined religiosity and the preference for natural versus synthetic drugs. Cao and Li (2021) found that more religious Chinese Taoists had a stronger natural drug bias than less religious Chinese atheists. They also found that Taoists were higher in their connection to nature (i.e., trait relatedness to nature) compared to atheists, which coincides with Taoists' beliefs about being in harmony with the natural world.…”

Rules We Live by: How Religious Beliefs Relate to Compliance with Precautionary Measures Against COVID-19 in Tibetan Buddhists

“…To test whether strictness to religious rules can generalize to strict observance of COVID protocols, we compared Gelug and Nyingma monks who share a national identity, ethnicity, and language and yet vary in their rule-following practice. This “just minimal difference” approach allows us to focus on the religious difference of interest while holding constant as many extraneous variables as possible (Cao & Li, 2021 ; Li, 2021b ; Li & Cao, 2019 ; Uskul et al, 2008 ). In Study 1, we asked participants to report to what extent they acted in accordance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines.…”

Entrepreneurship, Economic Development and Public Policy in the Post-Pandemic World

“…It may be suggested that when considering arguments in favor or against vaccines, like those pertaining to vaccine (un) naturalness, consumer worldviews may shape the degree to which those arguments resonate among consumers. Few studies [Cao, Li, 2021;Li, Cao, 2020] pertain to the role of the consumer worldview constructs in the naturalnessrelated mechanism of attitudes toward drugs (but not vaccinations). This gap represents the practical problem in developing vaccination advertising strategies: how to counter the 'vaccines-are-unnatural' arguments or provide 'vaccines-arenatural' ones across consumer groups with different worldviews or referring to different worldviews?…”