Abstract
Although scientists agree that replications are critical to the debate on the validity of religious priming research, religious priming replications are scarce. This paper attempts to replicate and extend previously observed effects of religious priming on ethical behavior. We test the effect of religious instrumental music on individuals' ethical behavior with university participants (N = 408) in the Czech Republic, Japan, and the US. Participants were randomly assigned to listen to one of three musical tracks (religious, secular, or white noise) or to no music (control) for the duration of a decision-making game. Participants were asked to indicate which side of a vertically-bisected computer screen contained more dots and, in every trial, indicating that the right side of the screen had more dots earned participants the most money (irrespective of the number of dots). Therefore, participants were able to report dishonestly to earn more money. In agreement with previous research, we did not observe any main effects of condition. However, we were unable to replicate a moderating effect of self-reported religiosity on the effects of religious music on ethical behavior. Nevertheless, further analyses revealed moderating effects for ritual participation and declared religious affiliation congruent with the musical prime. That is, participants affiliated with a religious organization and taking part in rituals cheated significantly less than their peers when listening to religious music. We also observed significant differences in cheating behavior across samples. On average, US participants cheated the most and Czech participants cheated the least. We conclude that normative conduct is, in part, learned through active membership in religious communities and our findings provide further support for religious music as a subtle, moral cue.
Highlights
Religious systems use various emotionally charged symbols to induce individual normative behavior
To contribute additional empirical data to this ongoing debate, we investigate the effects of religious auditory cues on individual honesty and extend the research literature on religious priming by adapting the methodology employed by Lang and colleagues [4]
While perceived negativity of the played track predicted dishonesty, we still observed the effect of ritual and religious affiliation as well as the interactions of Condition Affiliation and Condition Ritual, albeit we could not assess the effects of musical characteristics in the control condition due to the fact this condition had no musical stimulus. These findings indicate that the religious condition tracks did not affect cheating in the Dots Game due to their musical characteristic ratings; rather, participants who affiliated with a religious organization and participated in rituals were uniquely affected by the sacred music primes and, in turn, played less dishonestly than unaffiliated participants
Summary
Religious systems use various emotionally charged symbols to induce individual normative behavior. Previous studies have suggested that such subliminal religious reminders induce prosocial and normative behavior. The research documenting the effects of religious priming on prosocial behavior has recently faced substantial criticism [1,2,3]. To contribute additional empirical data to this ongoing debate, we investigate the effects of religious auditory cues on individual honesty and extend the research literature on religious priming by adapting the methodology employed by Lang and colleagues [4]. Our results add important nuance to previous results by investigating how the efficacy of culturally specific religious primes are impacted by selfreported religiosity and by religious socialization, identity, and ritual participation
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