Replicating and extending the effects of auditory religious cues on dishonest behavior

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.

Tags
Data and Resources
To access the resources you must log in

This item has no data

Identity

Description: The Identity category includes attributes that support the identification of the resource.

Field Value
PID https://www.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237007
PID pmc:PMC7425871
PID pmid:32790699
URL http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC7425871
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237007
URL https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237007
URL https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237007
URL https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/replicating-and-extending-the-effects-of-auditory-religious-cues-on-dishonest-behavior(9500808d-5d7c-4e20-8efa-19f254c847d6).html
URL https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203
Access Modality

Description: The Access Modality category includes attributes that report the modality of exploitation of the resource.

Field Value
Access Right Open Access
Attribution

Description: Authorships and contributors

Field Value
Author Nichols, Aaron D., 0000-0003-2536-5850
Author Lang, Martin, 0000-0002-2231-1059
Author Kavanagh, Christopher
Author Kundt, Radek
Author Yamada, Junko
Author Ariely, Dan
Author Mitkidis, Panagiotis
Publishing

Description: Attributes about the publishing venue (e.g. journal) and deposit location (e.g. repository)

Field Value
Collected From PubMed Central; DOAJ-Articles; Crossref; PURE Aarhus University
Hosted By Europe PubMed Central; PLoS ONE; PURE Aarhus University
Publication Date 2020-01-01
Additional Info
Field Value
Language English
Resource Type Article
keyword R
keyword Q
keyword keywords.General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
system:type publication
Management Info
Field Value
Source https://science-innovation-policy.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=dedup_wf_001::7f9f137f3d6efb0e5469334d6625f377
Author jsonws_user
Last Updated 26 December 2020, 23:36 (CET)
Created 26 December 2020, 23:36 (CET)