Ritualization reduces anxiety
Martin Lang and Radim Chvaja published a chapter discussing the relationship between ritual and anxiety in The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion.
(How) does religious priming work?
While religious priming is said to increase prosocial and normative behavior, many critiques doubt the replicability and the broader validity of this research technique. An international team, together with Martin Lang and Radek Kundt, realized an experiment on an intercultural sample, which was aiming to replicate and extend a previous experimental design focused on the influence of instrumental religious music on dishonest behavior.
The experiment, which took place in the Czech Republic, Japan, and the USA, tested whether religious music decreases dishonest behavior in comparison to secular music, white noise, or no music at all playing during the “Dots game”. The study did not detect any effect of auditory cues on dishonest behavior, not even with an interaction between auditory cues and religious affiliation of the participants. However, interactions between the auditory cues and religiosity of participants, and between auditory cues and ritual participation were found. Specifically, religious music decreased dishonest behavior in participants who often attend rituals and whose religious affiliation matched the religious cue.
You can find the article here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237007
