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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., Competing Interests: NO. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Previous studies have shown that the maximizing orientation, reflecting a motivation to select the best option among a given set of choices, is associated with various negative psychological outcomes. In the present studies, we examined whether these relationships extend to friendship selection and how the number of options for friends moderated these effects. Across 5 studies, maximizing in selecting friends was negatively related to life satisfaction, positive affect, and self-esteem, and was positively related to negative affect and regret. In Study 1, a maximizing in selecting friends scale was created, and regret mediated the relationships between maximizing and well-being. In a naturalistic setting in Studies 2a and 2b, the tendency to maximize among those who participated in the fraternity and sorority recruitment process was negatively related to satisfaction with their selection, and positively related to regret and negative affect. In Study 3, daily levels of maximizing were negatively related to daily well-being, and these relationships were mediated by daily regret. In Study 4, we extended the findings to samples from the U.S. and Japan. When participants who tended to maximize were faced with many choices, operationalized as the daily number of friends met (Study 3) and relational mobility (Study 4), the opportunities to regret a decision increased and further diminished well-being. These findings imply that, paradoxically, attempts to maximize when selecting potential friends is detrimental to one's well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

This study investigated how Japanese-speaking learners of English pronounce the three point vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/ appearing in the first and second monosyllabic words of English noun phrases, and the schwa /ə/ appearing in English disyllabic words. First and second formant (F1 and F2) values were measured for four Japanese speakers and two American English speakers. The hypothesis that the area encompassed by the point vowels in the F1-F2 vowel space tends to be smaller for the Japanese speakers than for the English speakers was verified. The hypothesis that the area formed by the three schwas in chicke_n, spoonfu_l, and Tarza_n is greater for the Japanese speakers than for the English speakers and its related hypothesis were largely upheld. Implications for further research are briefly discussed.