Effects of religious auditory cues on dishonest behavior
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Previous studies suggest that religious reminders and contexts enhance the saliency of group-specific norms and increase prosocial behavior. However, the effects of religious situational factors on dishonest behavior are less well documented and the underlying perceptual-behavioral mechanisms through which religious cues affect decision-making are still not fully understood. Moving beyond both the anthropomorphic depictions triggering reputational concerns and the priming carrying semantic associations with moral norms, we tested how an arbitrary subtle sensory cue associated with religion that does not bear any inherent meaning by itself affects moral behavior. Using an instrumental religious music, we conducted two experiments across four different sites: Japan, Mauritius, the Czech Republic, and the USA. Participants were exposed to one of three kinds of auditory stimuli (religious, secular, or white noise), and were given a chance to cheat on the subsequent task to increase their monetary reward. We report on the interaction between the condition and religiosity across sites as well as on the cross-cultural differences. |
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