Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Investigation of Totemism and Daoism

摘要

This article aims to examine the evolutionary relationship between totemism and Daoism cross-culturally. A total of 519 people participated (195 Americans and 324 Chinese), which included 95 students at a Midwestern university and 100 individuals from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). There were 268 on-campus participants from a university on the East coast in mainland China, whereas 56 completed it online from East China. Participants were asked to complete the Daoist Thinking Style Questionnaire (DTSQ; see Cott, 2012) and Lee's Totemic Thinking Questionnaire (LTTQ; see Lee, 2014). We found that totemism was significantly correlated with Daoism, and that this relationship varied cross-culturally-more so for Americans than for the Chinese, which was moderated by the interaction between religiosity and Daoism. This may suggest that human beings survive and function well because of a close spiritual attachment to animals, plants, and other natural things, objects, or phenomena. However, future research will be needed.