• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.37-50
• /
• 2024

Many people are interested in vegetarianism for health and animal welfare reasons, but putting it into practice is difficult. This study aims to examine how an individual's thoughts on the mind-body connection influence their choice of vegetarian products. In Study 1, the impact of two types of thoughts on health behaviors and the selection of vegetarian products was compared: dualism and physicalism. The mind and body are separated in dualism, whereas the mind and body are connected in physicalism. Study 2 tested whether thoughts about the mind-body connection activate the social values that an individual aspires. Study 3 used priming with healthy and unhealthy food images to examine whether the mind-body dualism connection was bidirectional. Study 1 shows a lower intention for health-related behaviors under dualism conditions, compared to physicalism conditions, where the mind and body are connected. In Study 2, the intention to engage in health-related behaviors and the preference for self-transcendence values were lower than in the physicalism condition. Study 3 shows that participants primed with unhealthy images had higher dualistic scores than those primed with healthy plant-based images. These results suggest that an individual's thoughts about the mind-body connection may affect health behaviors and social value activation differently.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.105-120
• /
• 2018

Current neuroscience views the mind-body problem from the monistic perspective which claims that the human mind is the result of brain activity and that the mind shuts down when the brain does. However, a considerable number of lay people still believe in the existence of the soul and the afterlife, concepts that are hard to explain from the monistic perspective. This study examines whether lay people think that the mind of the dead is capable of exceeding the physical constraints if they believe that such mind exists. After reading one of three vignettes which describes the state of the protagonist as alive, dead, or brain dead, the participants evaluated the protagonist's general mental capacity and transcendental ability to obtain new information. The participants rated that the dead protagonist had more 'transcendental ability to obtain new information' than the alive one if they evaluated high general mental capacity to the protagonist. In addition, unlike the alive condition, in the dead and the brain dead condition, there was a correlation between the general mind capacity rating and the transcendental ability rating. The results suggest that lay people expect the mind of the alive and the dead to be different, as they believe the latter's general mind capacity connotes transcendental ability. We also found that the participants' religiosity affected their beliefs about the transcendental ability of dead person.