“Rossano has long been recognized as a pioneering scholar in the evolutionary study of religion and once again he is leading the way with his most recent book. With his usual deftness, insight, and clarity, Rossano offers a novel theory on the function of ritual. He not only explains how the functional benefits of ritual have favored its emergence and endurance in our evolutionary history, but he also shows why ritual remains socially powerful and relevant today. ”
Richard Sosis, James Barnett Professor of Humanistic Anthropology, University of Connecticut
“Why are rituals universal to all human societies, what purposes do they serve, and how and when did they first develop? In an important book, Matt Rossano resolves a century of anthropological debate, showing how rituals manage key emotional resources, thereby helping to create commitments to collective social memories and group identities. The result is no less than a major advance in our understanding of human origins.”
David S. Whitley, author of Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origin of Creativity and Belief
“Rossano has been at the forefront of new endeavors marrying contemporary research efforts charting young children ’ s social and cognitive proclivities with discoveries drawn from the emerging archaeological record left by our hominin ancestors. Here he applies his impressive breadth of knowledge to detailing a new proposal – that human ritual emerged to support psychological resources centered around social capital. Anyone interested in better understanding the human condition, and especially our proclivity for investing vast amounts of time, energy and finances in the puzzlingly strange acts of ritual that characterize any human group, will find much to farm here. It’ s a thought-provoking and highly enjoyable read.”
Prof. Mark Nielsen, PhD; FAPS, School of Psychology, University of Queensland
RITUAL IN HUMAN EVOLUTION AND RELIGION
This book explores the role of ritual in social life, human evolution, and religion. It argues that rituals are mechanisms of ‘ resource management.’ In doing so, it provides a descriptive tool for understanding rituals and for generating predictions about ritual survival.
By showing how rituals have resulted from the need to nurture the social conditions necessary to sustain cooperative groups, Rossano presents a unique examination of the function of rituals and how they build, mobilize, and direct psychological resources. Rossano examines rituals from a diverse range of historical contexts, including the Greco-Romans, Soviet Russians, and those of ‘crisis cults.’ The book shows how rituals address societal and community problems by cultivating three psychological resources – commitment to communal values, goodwill (both of humans and supernatural agents), and social support or social capital. Holding communities together in the face of threat, disaster, or apathy is one of ritual’ s primary functions, and the author describes how our ancestors used ritual to become the highly social, inter-dependent primate that is Homo sapiens Including examples from all over the world and providing detailed descriptions of both past and current ritual practices, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, sociology, religion, anthropology, and archaeology.
Matt J. Rossano is Professor of Psychology at Southeastern Louisiana University and a well-known authority on the evolution of ritual and religion. He earned his doctorate in Psychology in 1991 from the University of California at Riverside. He is an evolutionary psychologist who has authored or co-authored dozens of scholarly papers, book chapters, commentaries, and reviews.
RITUAL IN HUMAN EVOLUTION AND RELIGION
Psychological and Ritual Resources
Matt J. Rossano
First published 2021 by Routledge
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TABLES
3.1 Summary of rituals. Each row summarizes the different ritual types in terms of the problem that the ritual addresses, the psychological resource being cultivated and how that resource is put to work to produce an end state that addresses the problem
7.1 Traditional Russian wedding rituals: summary of Russian wedding rituals. Those in bold (in Ritual column) have survived through the Soviet era
7.2 Traditional Russian funeral rituals: summary. Those in bold (in Ritual column) have survived, all of which entail resources (social support) flowing from the community to ritual participants (either the grieving family or the soul in aid of its journey)
“Santino. C’ mere. ” The young man approaches his scowling father. “Whatsa madda wid chu? Never tell anybody outside the family what you ’ re thinking ” A key scene in the Godfather where Vito Corleone reprimands his son for talking too much at a sit-down with another mobster. Too late, however. The damage was done and it nearly cost Vito his life. In Mafia terms, the damage was revealing a weak link in the Corleone family. Santino was interested in a deal that Vito had rejected. In evolutionary psychology terms, the damage was that Santino possessed a certain psychological state that could be used to a competitor’ s fitness advantage.
More so than any other species, we humans want to know what others are thinking – especially if those others affect our survival and reproductive interests. This is so, because over the course of our evolutionary history, mental states became fitness relevant. That is, another ’ s thoughts played a critical role in determining one ’ s chances of living, dying, or reproducing. In this way, mental states became resources, not unlike food or shelter. Because thoughts were so important, our ancestors needed a reliable way of reading and regulating them –and language wouldn’tsuffice. Why not? Because talk is cheap. People lie. A far more reliable mechanism was ritual.
This book argues that rituals are mechanisms of resource management. The heart of the argument can be stated succinctly in four claims: (1) over the course of hominin evolution, fitness became contingent on psychological states. (2) These psychological states can be understood as ‘ resources, ’ not unlike material resources such as territory, food, or fuel. (3) Ritual ‘ manages ’ these psychological resources –meaning that it cultivates, builds, and directs them. (4) Ritual management can be
analytically decomposed, providing a descriptive tool for understanding rituals and predictions about ritual survival. The first two chapters present an empirical defense of the first three claims. The book’ s remaining chapters discuss the utility of claim four.
Hominin Inter-dependency: Fitness Contingent on Psychological States
Fifty years ago, if you asked ‘What makes humans unique?’ the answer would have been intellect (Farah & Heberlein, 2007). We humans were the rational animal. We were smarter than other creatures. In recent decades, however, human uniqueness has been identified more with our social, rather than rational, abilities. Humans are the hyper-social animal (Tomasello, 2014). We cooperate with one another in ways that far exceed that of any other species. Psychologist Michael Tomasello has referred to this as ‘interdependency,’– where survival depends on working with others (Tomasello, Melis, Tennie, Wyman, & Herrmann, 2012). This interdependence, he argues, emerged in two stages over the course of our evolutionary history. Stage one involved ‘obligate cooperative foraging.’ Around half-a-million years ago, a lone-foraging hominin simply couldn ’t obtain enough food to survive. You either figured out how to work with others, or you starved.
In an environment where survival depended on cooperation, picking the right partner was a high-stakes affair – the wrong choice could kill you. A partner’ s attitude or mental state was as important as size or skill. Those who were aloof, belligerent, or otherwise self-absorbed had to be avoided, since they may prove unwilling to fairly share the rewards of cooperation. Instead, the temperate, sociable, and empathetic were better bets as dependable, even-handed allies. Thus, did psychological states become fitness relevant. A partner with pro-social sentiments was beneficial to one ’ s survival and reproduction. An anti-social partner was a threat.
But this raised a problem. How could one reliably determine who had the right mental states? A cheater, isn’t likely to admit (verbally) his or her nefarious intentions. Likewise, if reassuring words are often met with skepticism, how can I convince others of my good intentions? The answer was ritual. Our primate cousins, for example, establish cooperative relationships by grooming. If an ape is willing to expend the time and effort to rid another’ s fur of dirt and parasites, then he or she is more likely to be sincere about wanting a cooperative relationship. Being of primate stock, our hominin ancestors did the same. Ritualized gestures, such as grooming, embracing, kissing, and gift-giving served as signals of a cooperative attitude. But our ancestors did more than just passively watch for good partners. They actively cultivated them. The same ritualized gestures that signaled the presence of pro-social sentiments could also build, rejuvenate, and direct them. By using ritualized gestures to ‘ manage ’ pro-social emotions,
partnerships could not only be established, but they could be maintained over time. In this way, our ancestors better ensured their futures.
Step two of becoming hyper-social was group competition. In time, cooperatively foraging groups competed with one other for limited resources. Better organized, more tribally-minded groups tended to win these encounters. In this context, ‘tribally-minded’ means groups populated with members who were more intensely committed to shared norms of self-sacri fice and cooperation. Groups that were more akin to Marine regiments than hippie communes. Thus, once again, fitness depended on the presence and depth of a certain tribalistic psychological state (Richarson & Boyd, 2001). This state must also be rituallymanaged – that is, induced, reinforced, and sustained using group-wide celebrations involving dancing, chanting, and story-telling (Sosis, 2006). Other ritual activities such as initiations, taboos, scarification, and trance-induction would also play a role.
What Is a Psychological State?
This book takes a common sense approach to defining the term ‘psychological state.’ A psychological state is pretty much what you think it is: a state of mind. In describing a state of mind we might say that someone is anxious, content, inquisitive, worried, empathetic, and a host of other possible terms. For present purposes, there are two features of a psychological state that are most significant: (1) what it is – a cognitive/affective combination (thoughts and feelings), and (2) what it does – it can cause certain behaviors to be enacted (Loewer, 2001). For example, supposed I hear thumping, creaking sounds in a darkened hallway and interpret them as the footsteps of a volatile business associate to whom I owe money (thoughts). I will likely become fearful (feelings), thus raising the probability that I will take evasive action. (Note: this example is not meant to imply that thoughts always precede feelings. The opposite could be true or the two could be simultaneous).
Ultimately, psychological states reduce to particular patterns of brain activity. For example, if one believes that a parent or God will act as a protector, this belief activates the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex, which in turn attenuates amygdala activity in response to a perceived threat, moving one from a fearful state to one of greater confidence (see discussion in Flannelly, 2017 pp. 131–135). Conversely, if one believes that he or she has been abandoned by parents or God, this activates the dorsomedial pre-frontal cortex, which amplifies amygdala activity intensifying one ’ s fearful state.
Psychological states motivate certain behaviors congruent (or intended to be congruent) with the state. Thus, when motivated by fear, one runs away. When motivated by trust or goodwill, one extends patience or charity to another. When motivated by loyalty or commitment, one does acts of fidelity. However, as will be discussed in more detail shortly, another important property of psychological
For example, in one study hungry participants sat before a plate of cookies that they were not allowed to eat. Later, they had to try to solve difficult (impossible, really) puzzles (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). Experimenters found that those who had earlier resisted eating cookies gave up sooner on the puzzles compared to those who had indulged. The ‘resisters’ had exhausted their willpower abstaining from cookies and had little remaining for puzzle-solving. However, just as self-control can be depleted, it can be bolstered as well. Smokers who were required to boost their self-control capacity over several weeks by regularly doing hand-grip exercises or avoiding sweets were later more successful at quitting smoking (Muraven, 2010).
Self-control has important pro-social implications. Restraining anger, being diplomatic, sharing resources, fulfilling obligations and a host of other cooperative acts require varying degrees of self-control. Very likely, our self-control capacity evolved to allow us to reap the long-term benefits of cooperation while forgoing smaller short-term gains.
Recently, the strength model of self-control has become mired in controversy. Reviews and meta-analyses question whether self-control can truly be understood as a limited, domain-general resource; an idea referred to as ego-depletion (Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015; Hagger et al., 2016; see however, Baumeister & Vohs, 2016 for reply). Ego-depletion has typically been assessed using (presumably) unrelated, sequentially presented tasks of self-control. For example, resisting sweets (task 1) followed by the Stroop test (task 2). The fact that task 1 appeared to significantly impair task 2, suggested that they were drawing from a single, limited, domain-general source. However, studies showing ego-depletion effects may have critical methodological deficiencies.
The ultimate outcome of the ego-depletion controversy, however, is not crucial to how this book is employing the resource analogy. Instead, it is the far less controversial notion of cognitive fatigue resulting from time-on-task or processing overload that is important (Ackerman, 2011; Engle, Conway, Tuholski, & Shisler, 1995). Fatigue effects have been demonstrated across many varied contexts such as: (1) students’ performance declining signi ficantly after about 50 minutes of continuous work on a memory test (Randles, Harlow, & Inzlicht, 2017); (2) students’ standardized test results being poorer when assessed late in the day as opposed to earlier or after a break (Sievertsen, Gino, & Piovesan, 2016); (3) doctors becoming increasingly likely to prescribe questionable medications to insistent patients later in the day (Linder, Doctor, Friedberg, Reyes Nieva, Birks, Meeker, & Fox, 2014); (4) health care workers becoming increasingly likely to neglect obligatory hand-washing as their shifts wear on (Dai, Milkman, Hofmann, & Staats, 2015); (5) parole board members becoming less likely to grant parole the longer they have gone without a break (Danziger, Levav, & Avnaim-Pesso, 2011) and; (6) the selective impairment of deliberate, system 2 judgements (as opposed to automatic system 1 judgements) after performing tasks requiring mental effort (Pocheptsova, Amir, Dhar, & Baumeister, 2009).
Thus for present purposes, psychological states are resources, but not necessarily in the sense that there is a single, limited, domain-general source of ‘psychic energy ’ from which they all draw. Instead, they are resources in the sense that any particular state can be depleted when extensively used or put under stressed. These states can, however, be regenerated through rest or other strategies including ritual. Indeed, numerous pro-social psychological states appear to function in exactly this fashion, that is, they are limited, exhaust-able, yet replenish-able resources. For example, people experience compassion ‘fatigue’ when overexposed to suffering. Various coping strategies, including ritual behavior such as meditation, can help restore one ’ s reserves of compassion (Pfifferling & Gilley, 2000). Commitment between marriage partners often wanes over time and or when stressed, but can be rejuvenated by counselling or retreats (Richardson, 2010). Finally, trust and goodwill can be ‘lost’ through cheating or exploitation, but can also be ‘reconstituted’ through remorse and restitution.
Ritual Manages Psychological Resources
As with material resources, in ‘ raw ’ form, psychological resources have potential, but little actual value. For actualization, these resources must be cultivated or processed somehow, thereby making them suitable for use. For example, a tree is useless to a freezing human. But it represents a potential resource from which a product, heat, can be derived. To produce heat, however, work is needed. The tree must be ‘processed’– felled, cut into pieces, and dried into firewood.
Similarly, humans possess a wealth of pro-social sentiments. But these sentiments must be harnessed and directed to make them useful. For example, loyalty and goodwill must be directed toward something. One must be loyal to something – a group, a cause, a set beliefs or values, etc. Likewise, one must direct goodwill to someone or some group. It is when these pro-social sentiments have identifiable objects that they create the social capital necessary for cooperative action. Ritual is the means by which these pro-social sentiments become objectdirected. Below is an outline of a simple analogy between the physical processing of material resources and the ritual processing of psychological resources:
Material resource. Start with raw material (trees). Physically process the raw material (cut and cure the wood) creating a useable resource: firewood. Burn firewood to yield a valuable product: heat.
Psychological resource Start with raw psychological state (e.g. loyalty). Ritually process the state (e.g. an initiation ritual) creating a useable resource: loyalty to the group and its values. Actualize the resource yielding a valuable product: group stability (achieved by virtue of the fact that loyal members are more likely to follow group norms, contribute to group endeavors, behave altruistically toward group members, etc., all of which strengthens and stabilizes the group).
More than a decade of research has shown that ritual activity increases levels of pro-social psychological states such as goodwill, empathy, trust, liking, perceived unity and similarity (Hobson, Schroeder, Risen, Xygalatas, & Inzlicht, 2018; Morgan, Fischer, & Bulbulia, 2017). Increased ritual participation is associated with greater generosity and in-group normative behavior (Branas-Garza, Espın, & Neuman, 2014; Fischer, Callander, Reddish, & Bulbulia, 2013; Power, 2017; Soler, 2012). Ritual doesn’t just generate pro-social sentiments; it also replenishes them. For example, ritual behavior, such as meditation or prayer, can restore dwindling reserves of self-control (Friese, Messner, & Schaffner, 2012; Friese, Schweizer, Arnoux, Sutter, & Wanke, 2014). Ritual activities, such as prayer or offerings at shrines, have been shown to revitalize levels of commitment, trust, goodwill, and the tendency to forgive after offense (Fincham & Beach, 2014; Lambert, Fincham, Stillman, Graham, & Beach, 2010; Purzycki & Arakchaa, 2013). Chapter 2 reviews these studies in more detail.
Ritual’ seffects originate in the physiological and neuro-chemical changes it induces producing positive emotions. For example, grooming releases endogenous opiates bringing about a relaxed state conducive to social bonding (Keverne, Martinez, & Tuite, 1989). Embracing and kissing reduce blood pressure and cortisol levels (a stress hormone), while increasing endorphin and dopamine levels (Alpert, 2013; Grewen, Girdler, Amico, & Light, 2005; Light, Grewen, & Amico, 2005). Endorphin release, increased pain tolerance, and entrainment of ANS functions (breathing and heartrate) occur when individuals move in synchrony (Cohen, Ejsmond-Frey, Knight, & Dunbar, 2010; Lang, Bahna, Shaver, Reddish, & Xygalatas, 2017; Tarr, Launay, Cohen, & Dunbar, 2015). It is unsurprising then that these gestures have evolved to be ritualized signals of affiliative intentions among primates and other species (Goodall, 1986; Kraaijeveld & Mulder, 2002; de Waal, 1997).
I’m Late, I’m Late…
Consider this not-too-uncommon domestic scenario: “Watch out. Gotta go. I’ m late,” announces 20-year-old daughter as she grabs her Starbucks cap and dashes out the front door. This was a purely communicative act. It informed other members of the household of her immediate situation (she’ s late) and her attitudinal state toward them (“ no time for niceties, out of my way ”).
Now consider a more formalized act of the same type. Daughter hurriedly grabs her stuff but before leaving, she approaches her father and gives him an embrace and quick European-style kiss on each cheek while saying, “Love you, Daddy. I’ m late, gotta run. Bye-bye.” The second, I would argue, is a more ‘ritualized’ rendition of the first. It is also communicative, conveying similar information as the first (“I must be leaving, see you later”), but it does something else as well. It initiates certain psychophysical effects. Positive affect is induced in Father by virtue of a momentary reduction in his blood pressure and the release
of dopamine and endogenous endorphins. This positive affect reminds him of the mutual love and concern he shares with his daughter, abating his many frustrations with her. Goodwill is restored. As with foraging partners in the ancestral past, sustaining reserves of goodwill guards against future uncertainties. Thus, if Daughter’ s car unexpectedly breaks down, she may need to ‘draw upon ’ her father’ s goodwill. A ritualized goodbye earlier that fateful day ensures those reserves are well-stocked.
Consider a third scenario: once again, daughter is leaving; but it is a more permanent displacement. She has landed her first real job, cross-country. Despite the early hour, Mom and Dad have awoken her younger brother and sister, who have dutifully, though reluctantly, lined up at the front door to say farewell to their older sister. “I’ m gonna miss you, ” older sister says to each sibling as she gives him/her a hug and kiss. Finally, with approving smiles, long embraces, and verbal expressions of pride and encouragement, parents and daughter make their last misty-eyed goodbyes and she is on her way.
This last scenario may qualify as a true ‘goodbye ritual.’ Enacting it was deemed necessary (most likely by the parents) because a significant transition was occurring. The familial order – the roles and relations of the household – were being disrupted, creating anxieties about the future. Allaying those anxieties required that the transition be formally acknowledged and celebrated – ritually. This act reinforced the domestic order. It ‘conserved’ an important, psychological resource – the bonds of commitment among household members. The ritualized gestures conveyed the message “though you will be distant, you are still our daughter or sister. We are still committed to one another. ” That commitment is a resource upon which all can draw when needed.
What Is Ritual?
The above scenarios show how ritual manages pro-social psychological states. They also highlight how ordinary acts become increasingly ritualized. This raises the question of what exactly is ritual. The answer, unfortunately, is not simple.
Ritual is a bit like pornography; we know it when we see it, but trying to put a satisfactory definition to it is challenging (maybe impossible). Ritual specialist Catherine Bell went so far as to claim that ritual defied definition and the best we could do was to describe how actions or events became increasingly ‘ritualized’ (Bell, 1992 pp. xv, 73–74). This happens as more and more of the characteristics typically associated with ritual are incorporated into an activity or event. The more these characteristics are present, the more that something moves from being ‘ordinary’ to being thought of as ‘extra-ordinary’ or ritual-like (Bell, 1997 pp. 138–169; Laughlin, McManus, & d’Aquili, 1979 p. 29; Rappaport, 1999, pp. 24, 53–54).
For example, suppose I notice my favorite beer-drinking glass is spotty and crusty, not at all conducive to a pleasant Saturday afternoon swill. So, I
commence to washing it. I run water over the glass. I soap up a sponge and rub the glass up and down, in and out. I rinse the glass. I look it over – maybe repeat the entire process if I notice a spot or two remaining. Then I dry it with a clean dish towel. Now, I am ready for my beer. This was not ritual washing. My actions were purely practical. They were designed to achieve a necessary, useful goal –getting the glass clean. The goal guided the actions. In other words, I rinsed the glass, soaped it up, sponged it and dried it as much as was necessary to get it clean and ready to use. When my eyes said it was clean and dry, I stopped. If not, I continued. The only rule I followed was this: do what you have to do to get it clean as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Contrast this with ritual washing. In the Catholic Mass, the priest ritually washes his hands before the consecration of the host. As he moves to the side of the altar, servers bring him a small pitcher, a basin (called a lavabo), and a towel. The priest then extends his hands and mutters a brief prayer “wash away my iniquity; cleanse me of my sin,” as the altar server drips water onto his fingers. The priest then dries his hands with the towel, exchanges bows with the altar servers and continues with the consecration.
This is ritual washing. If the priest were actually trying to get his hands clean, he would need much more water and some soap. But this washing is symbolic, not practical. It’ s his soul he’ s trying to clean, not his hands. Its holiness, not hygiene, that is the focus of the action; and it is the manner of the washing that conveys that message. If we examine the washing closely, something odd emerges: the actions are intentionally impractical By this I mean that they deliberately emphasize their material ineffectiveness. It is no accident that the amount of water poured onto the priest’ s hands is too little to effectively cleanse them. Furthermore, the time and effort the priest expends in rubbing his hands with the water is too perfunctory to effectively clean them, and soap is conspicuously missing from the entire process. Topping it all off is the fact that the priest appears to ‘thank’ the altar servers (by bowing) for not bringing him effective washing materials. For their part, the altar servers reciprocate, ‘thanking’ the priest for not using the impractical materials in a practical way. Everyone seems fully ‘in’ on this game of not really washing anything! Clearly, what they are doing is intentional and it is intentionally not about getting hands clean. Lesson one of ritualization: intentionally perform useless acts.
Other aspects of ritual are also illustrated in this example. For instance, ritual gestures are often formalized or stylized versions of their practical counterparts. So, when the priest ritually washes his hands he does not do the ‘rub-scrub’ actions associated with real handwashing. Instead, he merely strokes and taps his fingers against each other. Formalized or stylized gestures can be either more restricted forms of the practical gestures (as in this case) or they can be exaggerated versions of them. As an example of this, think of how a formal or theatrical bow differs from the reflexive head nod that occurs when we shake hands. The formal bow includes a head nod, but this is merely one element
among a host of other ‘subordinating’ gestures which include: the right hand being pressed across the abdomen, the left hand extending forward, the palm facing up (a begging gesture), the back bending forward with eyes averted downward at the feet of the one receiving the bow. A really formal bow also includes a ‘ scrape’– that is, a bending back of the right leg such that the toes rub along the floor as the person bows. These added elements exaggerate the gesture, making it more dramatic and attention-getting.
Formalized or stylized gestures can also be more disciplined or precise versions of their practical counterparts. For example, consider the gestures of a military bugler when he plays taps at a funeral. To play the horn, the bugler must bring it up to his mouth. This action, however, is done in a very distinctive way: while keeping the torso stiff, the bugler bends the elbow, gradually raising the instrument while keeping it perpendicular to the ground. When the horn reaches facelevel, he snaps his wrist and slowly brings the horn to his lips. In doing so, the gentle ‘ arc ’ created when bringing the horn to the mouth is (as much as possible) made more discreetly angular. This gestural formality calls attention to the fact that something ‘out of the ordinary’ is happening. Whether it is bowing, washing hands, or playing a horn, ritualizing the actions entails doing them with extraordinary care. Formalizing what would otherwise be mundane actions reinforces the idea that something beyond the normal routine of everyday life is occurring. Or as Catherine Bell (1997 p. 160) puts it, “If ritual had a voice it would say: ‘This is different, deliberate, and signi ficant pay attention!’”
Repetition is another common feature of ritual. Though subtle, this can also be seen in the priest’ s ritual washing. His quiet prayer during the washing has an odd quality to it. He says, “Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me of my sin.” If you ‘google’ the term iniquity, you ’ll find that ‘sinfulness’ is one of the first synonyms that pops up. Technical nuances aside, iniquities are sins and washing is cleansing – so the same plea is being repeated only with slightly different words. Why the repetition? Doesn’t God get it the first time?
Actually, the communicative challenge is not with the divine, but with other humans, or in a broader sense, with other members of one ’ s species. In the natural world, miscommunication could have high, possibly even lethal, costs. Birdsong is part of the beauty of a warm spring morning. If you pay close attention, you ’ll notice that the same melody is often repeated over and over again. To us, the repetition can be quite charming. It fills the morning air with an ongoing melody. To the birds, however, the singing is not for aesthetic purposes. It is a serious ritualized signal. Its message is simple and worth repeating. “This is mine,” one bird says to another (meaning this tree, this territory, these resources). “And if you didn’t get it the first time, then I’ll repeat it again and again just so we are entirely clear – this is mine!”
Or, consider another ritualized signal familiar to dog owners – the play bow. Usually at the initiation of a rough-house play session, a dog will signal to her play partner (including human partners), her playful, non-aggressive intentions by
lowering her head to the ground between her front paws with butt raised high in the air and tail wagging. The ‘play bow’ sends the message that all of the seemingly aggressive acts (chasing, barking, biting, growling, etc.) from this point on are meant as play, not as real fighting. If that signal is not clearly understood, then the ensuing encounter could easily spin out of control and someone could get hurt. Watch dogs play together, and it is not uncommon to see the play bow repeated several times over the course of their play session. Repetition hammers the message home.
Ritual is replete with repetition. Christian baptism typically involves three sprinklings or dousings with water, one for each member of the trinity. Muslim prayer entails repeated postures of standing, kneeling, and falling prostrate. Even less formal secular rituals such as shaking hands (three pumps) or a performer acknowledging applause (bow, head nod, arms extended with open palms, mouthing ‘thank you ’ etc.) include repetitive elements.
Rule-governance is another frequent feature of ritualized actions. Rituals usually follow scripts of one sort or another. For example, the Jewish Seder ritual entails a sequence of 15 choreographed steps, with some sequences, such as ritual washing, involving steps within steps. Sometimes these scripts are written out (as with the Seder), but sometimes they are merely understood. The ritual script is frequently handed down as part of a cultural tradition – a tradition whose origin and rationale have sometimes been lost or obscured over the ages. At one level, the reason why the priest does ritual washing in the manner that he does is because the rubrics of the Mass tell him so. At another level, the historical circumstances that led to this rule may or may not be something of which he is aware. The same can be said for many ritual activities. We do them a certain way because that’ s the way we have always done them. Sometimes we know the deeper reason for this, but often we don’t.
As part of his definition of ritual, the famous anthropologist Roy Rappaport included the notion that ritual actions were ‘not encoded’ by the actors themselves (Rappaport, 1999 p. 27). By this he meant that the ritual performer often didn’t know why the ritual took the specific form that it did. Having been lost in the hazy past, the origins of the ritual script were simply attributed to ‘tradition.’ This opaqueness, however, often adds to ritual’ s mystic and power. Finally, ritual actions are often said to be ‘causally opaque ’ or ‘goal demoted.’ These are two closely related ideas (Nielson, Tomaselli, & Kapitany, 2018). Causally opaque means that it is unclear to observers what effect the ritual actions are having. So, if the priest is supposed to be ‘washing,’ but he’ s not using soap and he’ s not scrubbing his hands and the amount of water being used is insufficient to clean anything, then naïve observers might wonder what exactly it is the priest is trying to accomplish. Similarly, goal demotion refers to the actor’ s motivation in performing the ritual acts. What compels the ritual actor to act as he or she does? So, while causal opacity asks: “What is ritual actor doing?” Goal demotion asks: “What does the actor think he or she doing?”
In practical actions, the answer to these questions is simple. I washed my beerdrinking glass because washing it made it clean (the effect), and cleaning it allowed me to drink from it (my motivation). In ritual actions, however, since an obvious practical effect is rarely achieved, figuring out why the actor performs the act requires us to ‘look past’ practicalities and consider values. By virtue of their opaqueness, ritual actions force us to ‘ go beyond’ the question of “Why is she doing that?” to “Why is she doing that in that way?” We focus on process, rather than outcomes. Ritual is all about doing the act itself and doing it right. ‘Right’ meaning following the traditional script. It is in doing so that the message about values is transmitted. By ritually washing, the priest tells onlookers “the objects I’ m handling are sacred.” By ritualizing the bugle-playing, the bugler tells onlookers “We should have respect for the dead.”
We can now summarize what makes ritual, ritual: It entails actions that are obviously intentional, yet impractical. The actions are formalized, attention-getting, repetitious, and rule-governed. The ritual performer is concerned with the actions themselves, not with any practical ends those actions might achieve. As ritual specialist Catherine Bell has pointed out, ritual often exists on a continuum – as actions increasingly possess ritual-like features (intentionality, impracticality, formality, repetition, etc.) we become increasingly likely to perceive them as ritual.
Ritual vs. Routine
It is also important to distinguish ritual from routine. As with ritual, routines are often repetitive and possibly even rule governed in their execution. But there are two critical differences between them. First, routines are mindless, while rituals are mindful. Routines are done frequently enough that they become empty, motor habits. Brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, and making morning co ffee are routines. Quite often, you ’ re paying attention to other things while doing them. Something has become routine when you have little memory of having done it. Did I lock the door when I left this morning? Did I turn the coffeemaker off?
Second, routines are practical, while rituals are impractical. Routines accomplish something tangible, often important. At the end of a routine, my teeth are brushed, my coffee is made.
Ritual is not routine. Indeed, it is the opposite of routine. It is mindful, yet impractical. Because the goal of ritual is not its end, but its execution, it requires focused attention on proper gestural form and sequence. The hand-washing priest, the praying Muslim, the military bugler must make certain that they do actions in a precise and particular way. Thus, the mind must be focused on the very act of doing. In routine, the end goal drives behavioral execution. It really doesn’t matter how you tie your shoes or brush your teeth as long as they are tied and brushed in the end. It really does matter how you ritually wash, pray, or get the horn to your lips if you want to convey the proper message. This is not to say
that rituals cannot become routines over time. They can. This why rituals can sometimes lose their meaning. But when this happens, it is no longer a ritual.
Ritual vs. Ritualized Behavior
To this point, I have been using the terms ritual and ritualized behavior interchangeably. Technically, they are not. Ritualized behavior refers specifically to behaviors that, to one degree or another, possess the attributes of intentionality, impracticality, formalization, repetition, causal opacity, rule-governance, etc. Both humans and animals engage in ritualized behaviors. Rituals are broader than this. Rituals embed ritualized behaviors within traditional, ceremonial, and symbolic elements in order to make the total experience more emotionally moving and memorable.
A wedding is a ritual which includes numerous ritualized behaviors such as bowing, kneeling, processing up the aisle or around a canopy, and exchanging rings and vows. These behaviors, however, are immersed in traditional and symbolic elements which include the dress of the bride and groom, the venue (church in the Christian tradition or Chuppah in traditional Judaism), rings, scripture readings, traditional prayers, lighted candles, and so forth. These traditional, symbolic elements serve to connect the present ritual participants with those of the past and with the values of the larger culture or tradition of which they are a part. While ritualized behaviors have deep evolutionary roots and are present in numerous animal species, true rituals are uniquely human. Geese, for example, have mating dances (ritualized behavior), but not weddings (a true ritual).
The difference between ritual and ritualized behavior is important. However, I grow weary at constantly saying “ritualized behaviour” and will often use ritual when technically I should be saying ritualized behavior. When the difference is important, I will point it out. Since most of the time, however, I will be discussing human rituals, often the difference is not critical.
Indexical vs. Canonical Function
Rappaport (1999 pp. 52–53) discusses the different messages that rituals convey or functions they serve. He terms them indexical messages (or the indexical function) and canonical messages (or function). The indexical aspect of the ritual refers to the present state of mind of the ritual performers or participants. For example, by their participation in the wedding ritual the marrying couple is expressing something about their present state of mind – they are ‘in love’ and willing to commit to one another. The ritualized behaviors of non-human animal species transmit similar messages. The play-bowing dog is in a playful state of mind. The chimpanzee doing a begging gesture is in a submissive state of mind and no longer ‘wants’ to fight. The two geese doing a mating dance ‘intend’ to find mates. Ritualized behaviors
signal immediate mental states or intentions. This ‘indexical message ’ is shared across both human and animal species.
Ritual’ s canonical message (or function) refers to the enduring ideals or values embodied in the ritual gestures and/or signi fied in its symbols. For example, a religious wedding ceremony typically includes readings from sacred scripture, an exchange of vows and rings, a white, veiled bridal gown, and the lighting of candles. These elements and actions are part of the traditional ‘script’ of the wedding that has remained more-or-less the same for centuries. These elements refer to the ideals or values the community attaches to marriage, such as purity, fidelity, and family. By displaying and enacting these elements, the wedding ceremony reinforces these values and exhorts both the marrying couple and the wedding attendees to live up to them. Thus, in the wedding ceremony both an indexical message (the couple’ s mutual love) and a canonical message (the community ’ s enduring values associated with marriage) are being expressed. It is the presence of the canonical message that distinguishes rituals from ritualized behavior.
Connected to ritual ’ s canonical function is its capacity for ‘ gathering time. ’ A number of scholars have discussed how ritual gathers time, linking past, present, and future through ritual symbols and acts (Gillis, 2004; Myerho ff , 1984; Taylor, 2007 pp. 54 – 61). By this they mean that present ritual actions and symbols reference the past while simultaneously anticipating the future. This is true both at the personal and communal levels. For example, someone witnessing a wedding ceremony may be reminded of their own wedding (years ago) while also contemplating the inevitable maturation and marriages of their children. On a communal level, weddings, especially more traditional ones, link the present ceremony to signi fi cant events of the community ’ s past. Christian ceremonies typically reference Jesus ’ miracle atthe wedding feastatCana. Jewish ceremonies link the marrying couple to the union of God and the Jewish people. The veiling of the bride in traditional Jewish ceremonies symbolizes the veiling of Rebecca in her marriage to Isaac. At the same time, the chuppah or canopy beneath which the couple is wed is meant to represent the future home being established by the bride and groom. In traditional Hindu weddings, the couple ’ s union is thought to be a re fl ection of that of Laxmi and Vishnu (from the divine past), while karmic good fortune is believed to fl ow from the couple ’ s anticipated procreation (the future). Layers of personal and communal history become intertwined in ritual. The past is celebrated as promises are made to honor it in the future.
Useless Ritual
[R]itual actions do not produce a practical result on the external world – that is one of the reasons we call them ritual.
(Homans, 1941 p. 172)1
A central theme of this book is that rituals do work – they manage important psychological resources. This idea is at odds with prevailing scholarly views on ritual. As the above quote attests, inefficacy has often been used as a defining feature of ritual. It’ s not hard to figure out why. Physically speaking, rituals have no power. A rain dance cannot bring rain. A blessing cannot protect or materially enrich. A graduation ceremony only ‘marks’ what good grades have actually caused. Ritual is the ‘froth’ humans lay upon results arising from other causes. So pervasive was (and often still is) this view that in 2010 an entire volume was dedicated to the ‘Problem of ritual efficacy ’ (Sax, Quack, & Weinhold, 2010).
It was not always this way. One could cogently argue that equating ritual with inefficacy is a thoroughly modern muddle. Throughout most of our history, ritual was considered another form of work, real work – just as essential and productive as plowing fields and gutting fish. Anthropologist William Sax (Sax, 2010 p. 4) reminds us that across much of North India the term closest to the Western concept of ‘ritual’ is devakarya , meaning ‘work of the gods.’ Undoubtedly, our perspective on ritual has changed over the centuries because our understanding of ourselves and our world has been radically altered. The ever-present gods to whom so much ritual ‘work’ was directed have largely faded from view (at least for most Westerners). The world our ancestors inhabited was one where the supernatural mingled seamlessly with the earthly. Therefore, even the most routine tasks entailed a supernatural element. Whether one was cooking a meal, milking a cow, or erecting a monument, the relevant spiritual agents (gods, ancestors, spirits, saints, etc.) required appeasement, consultation, or at least acknowledgement, lest they be offended and exact revenge.
For example, in ancient Ireland, any site picked for building a home required the approval of the local fairies. Obtaining this approval could be done in different ways. Sometimes a spade was left in the ground over-night. If it was not moved by morning it was assumed that the fairies approved. Similarly, a line of stones might be laid across the plot and if found undisturbed the next day it was assumed that consent had been granted (Wilson, 2000 p. 4). The same was true in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Any new construction, from a palatial banquet hall to a peasant hovel, would include ritual activities. The architects and laborers were responsible for the physical construction of the building, while the ritual specialists were responsible for obtaining the protection or consent of the gods (Ambos, 2010 p. 18).
The home was as frequent a ritual venue as public spaces. An altar dedicated to Zeus was a common fixture in the courtyard facing most ancient Greek homes. Libations and other sacrifices were regularly made at the altar to ensure the god’ s protection and favor. Additionally, the hearth was considered a sacred place within the home. Daily meals would typically include small portions laid upon the hearth as an offering to the goddess Hestia, protector of the home and family. A newborn baby was paraded around the hearth as a ceremonial admittance to the household on the fifth day after birth (Nilsson, 1940). In describing life in
Ancient Greece, classical historians Zaidman and Pantel (1989 pp. 27–28) claim that “Everyday private life, no less than public civic life, was rhythmically regulated by all kinds of rituals, so that every moment and every stage of the Greek citizen’ s existence was intimately imbued with a religious dimension.”
One might criticize this ritual ‘work’ by claiming that it was all grounded in a pervasive illusion. The gods and spirits whose appeasement, guidance, or approval were so earnestly and effortfully sought simply did not exist. As our causal understanding of the natural world has expanded, it led to increasingly effective means of labor, marginalizing ritual as an essential part of that labor. Put simply, it’ s just not needed. We no longer bless fields to reap abundant crops because scientifically-informed farming methods are more reliable for achieving that end. Thus, the claim of ritual inefficacy is based on the laws of physics, not Western prejudice.
My response to this argument is that it assumes that appealing to the supernatural was the totality of the ‘work’ that ritual was doing. It is this assumption that has blinded us to ritual’ s more earthly or social accomplishments. I would further contend that our ancestors were as aware of ritual’ s non-supernatural effects as they were of it supposed supernatural ones. This is clearly the case with extant traditional societies.
For example, in his studies of the South African Venda, ethnomusicologist John Blacking (1973 p. 101) observed that their communal dancing and music making increased during times of plenty compared to leaner times. The Venda understood, he argued, that their communal rituals were most critical at times when relative prosperity might temp individuals to put self-interests over those of the community. Dancing together helped them overcome these temptations. Similarly, the !Kung San of Southern Africa hold healing dances about every two weeks. Around a blazing fi re, they chant and dance, while shaman healers work themselves into a trance state (called kia )wherein they lay hands on others transmitting healing power to them. While in kia , healers may also perform spectacular feats of pain tolerance such as holding red coals and rubbing them against their bare chests (Katz, 1982 p. 71). While the healers ’ actions are striking to outsiders, for the !Kung it is the communal spirit of the dance that is paramount. These dances, they told anthropologist Richard Katz, are central to the health and vitality of their community. Fretting over the e ffi cacy of the healing risks missing something more fundamental about the ritual.
Rituals do work. They manage the resources necessary for combating social entropy and future uncertainty. Their specific management duties entail cultivating certain mental states (commitment, goodwill) and social conditions (support networks or social capital) which serve as bulwarks against social disintegration and debilitating anxiety. Additionally, understanding the ‘work’ of rituals helps to explain their survival and death. Rituals that work well, tend to survive. Those that don’t often fade away.
Note
1 Importantly, Homans’ quote continues: “But to make this statement is not to say that ritual has no function. Its function is not related to the world external to the society but to the internal constitution of the society. It gives the members of the society confidence, it dispels their anxieties, it disciplines their social organizations. ” Much of what I’ m arguing in this book is consistent with this claim.
2 RITUAL MANAGEMENT
That ritual manages psychological resources is not intended to be a radical claim. People have been managing (or mismanaging) their psychological resources for a long time in a multitude of ways. For example, people use vacations, retreats, hobbies, and other diversions to renew or refresh themselves. Life drains our psychic energy, but a particular class of activity appears to restore it. Ritual is merely the most traditional member of that class. Maybe this is why mindfulness meditation has become something of a popular craze. It’ s an easily marketable form of ritual activity, which (if done properly) cultivates mental resilience and emotional stability. What the masses do informally, social scientists study more formally. This chapter reviews the empirical work that has been done demonstrating how ritual cultivates, builds, conserves, and re-energizes our pro-social psychological resources.
Ritual Builds Social Capital: Case Study
If ritual manages the psychological resources necessary for ‘powering’ human communities, then we should find examples where introducing ritual yielded measurable products by cultivating and directing psychological resources toward specific aims (i.e. it made those resources object-directed). The original study introducing the notion of ‘social capital’ to the scholarly lexicon provides just such an example (Hanifan, 1916).
Lyda Hanifan was born in West Virginia in 1879. After attending both the University of Chicago and Harvard, he returned to his home state serving as a school administrator before becoming the State Supervisor of Rural Schools. As State Supervisor, he made it his mission to improve rural schools. However, Hanifan knew that for parents and community members to support investments
in educational improvements, strong bonds of shared values and interests first needed to be formed. In other words, social capital had to be cultivated. Hanifan (1916 p. 130) defined social capital as:
that in life which tends to make tangible substances [real estate, possessions, cash] count for most in the daily lives of a people, namely, goodwill, fellowship, mutual sympathy and social intercourse among a group of individuals and families who make up a social unit, the rural community, whose logical center is the school.
(Note: my italics, underscoring what I take to be the core of the definition)
Hanifan’sdefinition of social capital is not too different from that espoused by economists and sociologists today. For example, the website for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/ detail.asp?ID=3560)defines social capital as: “networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups. ”
Reserves of social capital imply high levels of trust, and trust allows people to work effectively together to achieve common goals. So, just as any builder first gathers the necessary material resources before constructing a house (finances, lumber, equipment, labor, etc.), a community must gather the necessary psychological resources before constructing social change. Or as Hanifan put it:
First, then, there must be an accumulation of community social capital. When the people of a given community have become acquainted with one another and have formed a habit of coming together upon occasions for entertainment, social intercourse and personal enjoyment, that is, when sufficient social capital has been accumulated, then by skillful leadership this social capital may easily be directed towards the general improvement of the community wellbeing.
(Hanifan, 1916 p. 131)
Hanifan describes how social capital was ‘built up ’ in a rural West Virginia school district using regular community meetings. This capital was subsequently ‘expended’ in achieving a variety of positive outcomes. The setting was a roughly 33-square-mile district in rural West Virginia encompassing 15 schools, most of which were single-teacher facilities. At Hanifan ’ s direction, the district supervisor, Mr. Lloyd T. Tustin, required teachers to hold recurrent meetings in their schoolhouses to build rapport with parents, families, and community members. A sample agenda from one of the meeting is provided below (p. 133):
Song, led by the school choir. Devotion.
Address, by the teacher.
Reading, by a pupil.
Current Events, by a pupil.
Essay, by a pupil.
Song, led by the school choir.
Reading, by a pupil.
Vocal Solo, by a local soloist.
Reading, by a pupil.
Debate.
Cornet solo, by a citizen.
Social half-hour.
In his article, Hanifan (1916 p. 133) lauds the fact that many of the activities were student-led. Equally noteworthy, however, is how ritualized the meetings were. Indeed, with the exception of a closing prayer, they followed a script not unlike a rural Sunday church service – an opening hymn, prayer, readings interspersed with music, an address (sermon) by the meeting leader (teacher/pastor), and informal socializing afterwards. Meetings were formalized and scripted, with repetitious, performative, attention-getting elements – all the traits associated with ritual (Bell, 1997). Furthermore, Hanifan describes how other meetings included storytelling by community elders and patriotic activities such placings flags at the schoolhouses and singing the National Anthem. Hanifan credits these regular community meetings with cultivating the social capital necessary to embark on a series of endeavors yielding district-wide improvements, including:
1. The first district-wide meeting of all the students, parents, and teachers at the Agricultural Fair and School Exhibit held at the district’ s most centrally located school.
2. A 14 percent increase in student attendance across the district.
3. The establishment of evening literacy classes addressing the district’ s high adult illiteracy rate.
4. Free expert lectures given at various schools addressing practical topics of local interest such as improvements in agricultural, roads, sanitation, and morals.
5. Fundraising activities for improvements to local libraries.
6. Establishment of a district baseball league, credited with encouraging greater school attendance.
The important point is that ritualized activities served as the primary mechanism for generating the psychological resources necessary for goal-oriented community actions. It is also important to note that the pro-social psychological states (goodwill, commitment, community concern, etc.) from which social capital was generated were present prior to the introduction of the ritual activities; but in a
‘ raw ’ not-yet-usable form. Ritual did the work of ‘processing’ those resources so that they could be directed toward creating valuable products. In brief, the sequence was:
Start with raw psychological states (various pro-social sentiments). Process these states with ritualized community meetings yielding a useable resource: social capital. Actualize this social capital producing valuable products: measurable improvements in educational facilities and outcomes.
The ritualized nature of the schoolhouse meetings raises an interesting question: Was ritualization integral to their success or merely incidental? The next sections review numerous studies showing that ritual builds pro-social sentiments, but that does not mean that those sentiments cannot be built in other ways. Maybe it was simply gathering together that was critical to the cultivating of social capital, not that those gatherings were ritualized? Indeed, it was the gathering itself that Hanifan focused on in his article. So of what importance is ritualization?
My answer to this is that gathering together, in and of itself, in no way ensures a positive outcome. Social interactions can flop just as surely as they can succeed. We are all too familiar with this. A dumb joke, an unintentionally offensive comment, forgetting to say ‘thanks,’ ignoring someone without realizing it, and on and on – there are countless ways we can botch an encounter. Ritualizing reduces the probability of mucking things up by scripting the interaction. By following the ritual script, we minimize improvisations that might anger or offend. The script increases predictability, raises comfort levels, and diminishes the likelihood of social disaster (how many times have we breathed an internal sigh of relief when, at a semi-formal banquet, the ‘dinner is served’ announcement is made, sparing us from telling our wind-bag conversation partner what really think of them!). Getting people together is always a risk. Ritualizing reduces risk. That’ s why it works; and why it worked in Hanifan’ s case; and why a wealth of empirical research had confirmed its efficacy.
As impressive as it might be, Hanifan ’ s study was observational and correlational. More recently, both lab-based and field studies have convincingly demonstrated ritual’ s causal role in generating cooperative inter-personal psychological resources.
Ritual and Cooperation
Hanifan’ s observations suggest that ritualized activities can produce positive emotional connections which can lead to cooperative action. Other empirical data support this. Historian William McNeill (1995) was one of the first to describe how engaging in communal dancing, chanting, or marching produced a euphoric mental state leading to “muscular bonding” among participants. Indeed, for centuries armies have used march and drill for creating solidarity among
recruits from sometimes widely diverse backgrounds. Even more important is how this muscular bonding could result in effective joint action. McNeill (pp. 59–65) documents numerous historical examples of social/revolutionary movements that utilized synchronized ritual activities to unite followers and embolden action, such as the Cargo Cult movement in Melanesia, the Liberty Tree and Carmagnole dances of the French Revolution, the Beni dance movement of colonial Tanganyikan, and the Ghost Dance movement among late 19th century Native Americans. To this list can also be added the severe oath-taking rituals utilized by the Mau Mau of colonial Kenya (Edgerton, 1991).
Laboratory studies have confirmed that ritualized actions involving synchronized movements facilitate joint cooperative endeavors. For example, Valdesolo, Ouyang, and DeSteno (2010) had participants either move in synchrony or asynchronously, after which they performed a joint task. The task required participants to hold opposite ends of a wooden labyrinth and collaboratively guide a steel ball down its winding pathway as quickly as possible. Successful completion of the task required sensitivity and responsiveness to each partner’ s actions. Those who moved in synchrony proved to be more effective partners (i.e. signi ficantly faster completion times) than those who did not.
Ritual may be especially important when achieving goals entailing stress or suffering. Studies have shown that contemplative ritual actions, such as meditation, can increase pain tolerance. For example, Kabat-Zinn (1982) found that a signi ficant proportion (65%) of chronic pain patients reported a 1/3 or more reduction in their pain by using mindfulness meditation. Zeidan and colleagues (Zeidan et al., 2011) found that mindfulness meditation produced a significant reduction in pain when participants were exposed to a temporary heat stimulus. Two other studies have shown that contemplative practices that included supernatural elements produced signi ficant reductions in the pain experienced from cold water or electric shock (Wachholtz & Pargament, 2005; Wiech et al., 2008). Finally, Cohen, Ejsmond-Frey, Knight, and Dunbar (2010) found that rowing in synchrony with others increased endurance and pain tolerance compared to rowing alone. Collectively what these studies suggest is that when a common goal requires individuals to endure pain and suffering, ritual activities that involve contemplative and/or synchronized elements can facilitate their successful completion.
Ritual and Social Bonding
A wealth of empirical data demonstrate that ritualized actions cultivate pro-social dispositions. For example, psychologists Wiltermuth and Heath (2009) had subjects either move in synchrony (walking in step, singing together, singing and moving together), move asynchronously (walking at individual paces, singing, and moving individually) or not at all. Later, subjects played an economic game where they could extend varying levels of trust and cooperation to other players.
Subjects who moved in synchrony were found to be significantly more trusting and cooperative than those who did not.
Later studies have found an array of affiliative emotions arising from synchronous movement. People who moved together tended to like each other more, perceive one another as more similar, trust each other more, empathize more with one another, believe that they shared the same values, and were more willing to extend compassion and cooperation to each other (Fischer, Callander, Reddish, & Bulbulia, 2013; Hove & Risen, 2009; Lang, Shaw, Reddish, Wallot, Mitkidis, & Xygalatas, 2015; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2011). So powerful is the effect of synchronized movement that it can create a stronger sense of social cohesion than other potential unifying factors such as skin color (Lakens, 2010).
Laboratory studies have been complemented by field research which has largely drawn the same conclusion – moving together means bonding together. In one well-known study (Fischer et al., 2013) nine different communities (totaling 113 participants) in Wellington, New Zealand were identified that engaged in different types of ritual activities. For some, their rituals involved what the authors called exact synchrony, that is, movements and/or vocalizations done in unison. These included Yoga activities, Kirtan (Hindu devotional singing), and Buddhist chanting. Other groups engaged in complementary synchrony where movements were not necessarily in unison, but they complemented one another in the pursuit of a shared goal (as often happens in dance). These included a martial arts group, a drumming group, a choir, and a Christian church service. Finally, there were two control groups that engaged in activities that were neither synchronized nor complementary but involved multiple individuals active together for about the same amount of time as the other two groups (30 minutes). These included a running group and social poker group.
Experimenters measured four aspects of prosociality: (1) Generosity (measured using an economic game similar to that used by Wiltermuth and Heath); (2) entitativity or the degree of unity individuals felt with other in-group members; (3) sacred values or the extent to which the ritual activity represented transcendent values or values that should not be violated; and (4) in-group trust.
On all four pro-social measures, groups engaging in synchronized ritual activity had significantly higher scores compared to the other groups. On entitativity, both the exact and complementary synchrony groups were significantly higher than the controls. Furthermore, on both trust and sacred values the complementary groups were significantly lower than the synchronous groups but higher than the controls. Bottom line: both synchronous and complementary ritual movements produce increased pro-sociality compared to non-ritual movements. Of the two, however, synchronous movements have stronger effects than complementary.
Further analyses demonstrated that the link with sacred values was especially important to cooperation. The authors argued that ritual activities (especially those involving synchronous movements) produced profound feelings of group unity, intensifying a sense of shared sacred values among group members,
ultimately leading to cooperative behaviors. Note well the sequence of events: ritual activity – the building of in-group unity – the sharing of sacred values –cooperative actions. Cooperative action is the culmination (or product) of a sequence of preceding steps beginning with ritual activity. Prior to cooperative action, psychological resources (unity, shared sacred values) were ritually-cultivated and ‘built up, ’ only then did cooperative acts follow.
Sometimes ritual synchrony goes deeper than overt gestures. It extends down into the body’ s physiological makeup. For example, studies have shown that rosary recitation causes entrainment of autonomic nervous system function (Anastasi & Newberg, 2008; Bernardi et al., 2001). Put more simply, breathing and heart rates tend to synchronize among participants – creating conditions for strong emotion bonding. The shared pattern of autonomic nervous system activity across individuals creates empathetic identification among them, bringing them into a common emotional state and heightening their sense of social connectedness (Pearce, Launay, & Dunbar, 2015; Fischer, Xygalatas, Mitkidis, Reddish, Tok et al., 2014).
One ritual that has been studied in detail at the physiological level is the annual fire-walking ceremony held in San Pedro Manrique, in Northeastern Spain. The fire-walking takes place at midnight in an especially designed amphitheater (the ritual space) and is the culmination of a day-long series of celebrations and activities in the tiny village. At around 11:30 pm, a carpet-like path of red-hot oak coals is prepared by smoothing them with poles called hoguneros. People dance around the fire until midnight when the fire-walking commences. A dozen or so young men from the village are chosen to cross the coals usually bearing a wife or girlfriend on their backs.
Researchers monitored heartrate patterns in both the fire-walkers and audience members (Konvalinka et al., 2011). They found that as the fire-walker crossed the coals, related audience members had heartrate patterns that synchronized with his. Thus, the empathy between the fire-walker and his relatives witnessing the ritual was so deep that their autonomic nervous systems shared the same pattern of activity. This did not occur, however, for non-relatives. As has already been discussed, where there is synchrony there is social bonding. Reinforcing this bonding even further were the emotional states of the participants and observers. Participants reported an intense emotional ‘high’ after the ritual, while related observers reported fatigue (Fischer et al., 2014). Both participants and observers had been through an ordeal which left the former exuberant and the latter relieved.
Researchers also examined the memory reports of the ritual participants. Two days after the ritual, fire-walkers ’ memory for details of the walk was very poor, with 70% reporting no specific details at all (40% reported going blank). Two months later, most participants claimed to recall a few (or a few more) details, most of which were inaccurate. This was in spite of the fact that their confidence in their memory ’ s accuracy increased at two months compared to two days.
Authors argued that the lack of immediate memory was likely due to the emotional suppression (‘stoic resolve’) that the fire-walkers’ exhibit during the ritual. Since demonstrating bravery is important for ritual participants, they likely expend considerable cognitive resources suppressing their fear during the walk itself. Because so much cognitive energy was being expended suppressing their emotions, few resources were left for encoding and storing details of the experience as it unfolded. Later, this ‘ memory gap ’ was filled by discussions with ritual observers and the fire-walkers’ own past experience as an observer. In this way, a shared, canonical memory of the event is stored rather than an individualized, personal memory.
Thus, three mechanisms combined to create social bonding in the fire-walking ritual: (1) the physiological synchrony shared by ritual participants and related observers, (2) an emotional sense of ordeal experience by both participants and observers, and (3) a common, schematic, culturally-reinforcing memory among ritual participants and observers. Indeed, residents of San Pedro Manrique expressed considerable pride in the ritual and their community. The ritual was seen as a deeply embedded aspect of their identity.
Ritual and Belief
A number of studies have examined the intersection of ritual activity and belief. Since it is often true that ritual activity is performed in the context of religious or supernatural belief, one might wonder if it is the belief more than the ritual that is responsible for pro-social sentiments and cooperative action. Interestingly, studies addressing this issue have typically found just the opposite – the role of ritual is paramount; the role of belief is marginal.
In one study, over 750 Spaniards were tested on three different measures assessing generosity, trust, and sense of fairness (Branas-Garza, Espin, & Neuman, 2014). The participants were divided into groups based on religion (the majority being Catholic) or lack thereof. Religious participants were also questioned about their frequency of church attendance (i.e. ritual participation).
On all measures, the non-active Catholics (attended Mass less than once month) were indistinguishable from the non-believers. Active Catholics (attended Mass at least once a month), however, were signi ficantly more generous and fair than non-believers (no differences on trust). What this study indicated is that belief or non-belief is of little consequence when it comes to virtue. It was ritual participation that made the difference.
For devout Catholics, ritual participation includes confession as well as Mass attendance. Another study had Catholics either recall a sin for which they had received absolution (through confession) or a sin for which they had not been absolved (Mckay, Herold, & Whitehouse, 2013). Participants were then given the opportunity to donate to the church. Results showed that participants who recalled receiving absolution were signi ficantly more generous than those who
did not. Additionally, the more devout the participant was (measured by their tendency to pray, read the Bible and believe in divine judgment) the more generous they were.
A similar ritual participation effect has been found for Orthodox Jews (Ru ffle& Sosis, 2007; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003). Religious kibbutz members who regularly attended prayers (three times a day) were signi fi cantly more generous than either secular kibbutz members or religious members who did not pray, generosity being measured by the amount donated to a common fund. Similarly, Soler (2012) found that those who more frequently participated in Brazilian Candomble religious rituals adhered more scrupulously to its behavioral proscriptions and reported doing more in-group cooperative acts such as donating money or visiting sick group members. Active ritual participants were also more likely to receive generosity from others in the form of lent money or care when sick. Finally, more active ritual participants were more generous in a pubic goods game.
Perhaps these results should not be so surprising. The so-called ‘Sunday effect’ has been around for nearly a decade (Malhotra, 2010). This refers to the fact that religious people tend to behave more virtuously on Sunday compared to other days of the week. This helps to explain why studies addressing differences between religious and non-religious people on pro-social behavior (such as the contentious issue of charitable giving) have often had mixed and contestable results (Galen, 2012). This has led some researchers to argue that it is not so much the religious disposition (belief) that affects behavior but the religious situation (being in a context where through images, symbols, and rituals one is reminded of religious teachings). Anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas (2012) designed a field experiment where he could investigate the real-world impact of these two notions.
The study was conducted on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, home to a mix of many religions (Muslims, Christians, Taoists, Buddhists, etc.), but with a Hindu majority. Sixty-two Hindus were recruited for the study. The participants played an economic game where their generosity could be pitted against their self-interest. In the game, they were allowed to choose how much to withdraw from a common pot of 500 rupees (several days’ wages for an unskilled worker). Participants made their choice either in a religious setting (a Hindu temple) or a secular one (restaurant). Results showed that those in the temple withdrew signi fi cantly less (average of 170 rupees) compared to those in the restaurant (average of 231 rupees). Furthermore, when asked to explain their actions, signi fi cantly more of those in the temple (48%) made reference to moral considerations or fairness compared to those in the restaurant (19%). Conversely, signi fi cantly more of those in the restaurant explained their actions by referencing strategic calculations (68%) compared to those in the temple (48%). Interestingly, the self-reported religiosity of the participants had no e ff ect on their generosity.
We all possess pro-social sentiments and moral knowledge. We care about others and we want to do what’ s right. In the heat of the moment, however, we all sometimes succumb to our baser inclinations (the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak). This is true regardless of our professed beliefs, religious or otherwise. What has the greatest impact on actual moral behavior is not what we say we believe but what we are thinking at the moment the action is executed. If moral precepts (including religious moral precepts) are in our conscious awareness at the critical time, we are more likely to behave morally. If not, we are far less likely to do so. The reason why ritual has an impact where professed belief does not is very simple: it reminds us of our proclaimed beliefs. Maybe that is why religious leaders are constantly telling people to go to church – every Sunday.
Extreme Ritual and Pro-social Behavior
For centuries, military recruits have endured pain and humiliation as part of their training. Similarly, hazing has a long history in fraternity, sorority, and other group initiations. The underlying premise of such ordeals is that shared suffering creates social bonding. Indeed, modern studies have supported this notion (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Bastian, Jetten, & Ferris, 2014; Jong, Whitehouse, Kavanagh, & Lane, 2015). From this, one might conclude that more intense ritual would produce stronger social bonding. This appears to be true.
Xygalatas and colleagues (Xygalatas et al., 2013) studied an extreme ritual that takes place during the Hindu festival of Thaipusam on Mauritius. Hundreds of temples across the tiny island help organize the festival which attracts thousands of participants and onlookers. The festival’ s highlight is the Kavadi ceremony which entails hours of prayers and chanting followed by an agonizing procession where men, whose bodies have been pierced with tens to hundreds of needles, hooks, and skewers, carry a kavati attam for hours up a steep hillside to the Temple of Murugan. The kavat attam is a nearly 90-pound structure made of bamboo, wood, and metal adorned with flowers and peacock feathers. As if this were not enough, the men often wear nail-bearing shoes or they go barefoot on the scorching-hot asphalt.
Researchers identified three groups to study: (1) a high-ordeal group that participated in the body piercing and procession, (2) a low-ordeal group that participated in the chanting and praying, and (3) witnesses who walked along with the high-ordeal group members but did not have piercings nor carry the kavati attam In addition to these groups, a control group was also tested months later consisting of members of the same community as the ritual participants but apart from any ritual context.
Everyone was tested on their generosity and subjective feeling of connectedness to their national, ethnic, or religious groups. This was done in the following way. After completion of the ritual activity (for all but the control group), each participant was taken to a testing room near the temple where
they were given a questionnaire asking about demographics, subjective pain experience, and their emotional connection to their various groups. After completing the questionnaire, each participant was given 200 rupees (as substantial sum for this locality) for their participation. As they left, they were given an opportunity to anonymously donate to a local charity. The amount donated served as the measure of generosity. High-ordeal ritual participants on average donated 151 rupees compared to only 81 for low ordeal ritual participants, a highly signi fi cant di ff erence. Interestingly, witnesses actually donated slightly more than the high-ordeal participants, although the di ff erence was non-signi fi cant. All of these groups were more generous than the control group tested later, which (on average) gave only 52 rupees. A clear lesson emerges from this study: ritual makes you more generous and extreme ritual makes you extremely generous.
High-ordeal ritual also had an effect on the participant’ s sense of identity – but not in the way the researchers expected. Xygalatas and colleagues had expected that after enduring ritual pain, the participants would have a stronger emotional connection to their Hindu-ness (given that the ritual is a specifically Hindu one) at the expense of their broader Mauritian identity. Instead, they found the opposite. Ritual participants and witnesses reported feeling a stronger emotional connection to their more inclusive Mauritian identity than their Hindu identity. This may be because the Kavadi celebration attracts participants from across nearly all the island’ s ethnic and religious groups. It is a Hindu festival celebrated by nearly all Mauritians.
Recent follow-up studies have added some interesting twists to the e ff ects of high-ordeal rituals (Fischer & Kruekaew, 2019; Mitkidis et al., 2017). One study (Fischer & Kruekaew, 2019) found interesting gender di ff erences regarding how pain and synchrony a ff ect social bonding. For women, greater social bonding was reported for painful rituals without synchronized movements. For men, however, synchrony and pain created a greater sense of social bonding. One possible reason for this is that males, more than females, over our evolutionary history were responsible for coordinated violent action against perceived threats, which may have selected them for greater sensitivity to synchrony as a bonding mechanism.
The other study (Mitkidis et al., 2017) tested high-ordeal Kavadi ritual participants and observers on honesty. Results showed that the ritual observers, but not the participants, were more honest after the ritual. Researchers speculated that watching other group members suffer created a ‘moral debt’ in the minds of the observers. In other words, after watching fellow group members willingly suffer for the sake of their religious/ethnic identity, ritual observers felt the need to ‘ pay back’ that identity through more scrupulous adherence to group-based moral codes. This suggests that over the course of human history, publically celebrated high-ordeal rituals generated social cohesion by both creating social bonding among participants and loyalty among observers.
Ritual and Trust
Across the desolate steppe of Central Asia (south-central Siberia and Mongolia) there are odd-looking mounds of rocks and tree branches often adorned with brightly colored silk scarves whipping about in the stiff breeze. These mounds are called cairns (rhymes with ‘ urn ’). Often they mark territorial boundaries. Their signi ficance, however, is as much religious as political. They are closely associated with traditional forms of spiritualism and shamanism. Stay by a cairn long enough and you might observe someone make a ritual offering. A traveler may stop and toss a few trinkets on the cairn or tie a scarf or two to it, circumambulate it, say a short prayer, and depart.
Anthropologist Benjamin Purzycki (Purzycki & Arakchaa, 2013) wondered what those witnessing a cairn ritual thought about the ritual performer. He gave locals a series of scenarios where a man was described as either being religiously observant (and therefore scrupulous about performing cairn rituals) or nonobservant (thus neglectful of performing rituals). They were then asked to judge the man ’ s honesty and trustworthiness. The results showed that those who performed rituals were perceived as being more honest and trustworthy than someone who did not. The results suggest that ritual observance was being used as an indicator of trustworthiness. A similar trust effect has been found with Christian ritual markers such as ashes on someone ’ s forehead indicating attendance at an Ash Wednesday service (McCullough, Swartwout, Shaver, Carter, & Sosis, 2016). Making an offering at a cairn or going to an Ash Wednesday service is a bit of a bother. But that’ s the whole point. The fact that they are a bother and yet some people do them anyway says something about their character (or at least it is perceived to say something).
Regular church attendance can have similar e ff ects. In the Tamil villagers she studied, Eleanor Power (2017) found that regular church attendance, more so than dramatic acts of religiosity, such as spirit possession, was associated with important reputational qualities such as being hardworking, wise, generous, and having good character. Additionally, regular worshipers were also more likely to be both providers and recipients of aid. Regular attendance was frequently viewed by others as a sincerer sign of religious commitment compared to infrequent dramatic displays which could be self-aggrandizing (Bird, Ready, & Power, 2018).
A recent laboratory study confirms what these field studies have found (Hobson, Gino, Norton, & Inzlicht, 2017). In the experiment, participants were assigned to perform a series of arbitrary, stereotyped, and repetitious (i.e. ritualized) behaviors at home for a week. They were told the behaviors were part of an ancient cultural tradition. Another group took a home survey that required approximately the same time duration as the ritual actions. Participants were then brought into the lab where they played a ‘trust’ game. This is an economic game where participants are paired with a partner to whom they can hand over a
variable amount of money. The more money they hand over, the larger the potential payoff for both partners. However, there is always the chance that once the money is transferred to the partner, he or she will just keep it all. Thus, for the highest payoff, partners must trust one another to be fair. Results showed that those in the ritual condition showed more trust (transfer significantly more money) to a partner whom they were told had also performed the same ritual actions.
Ritual Maintenance
Ritual doesn ’ t just build pro-social sentiments; it conserves, strengthens, and replenishes them. For example, one study (Friese & Wänke, 2014) showed how ritual activity (prayer) conserved self-control resources – meaning thatitprotected those resources from depletion. Participants in this study either engaged in prayer or free thought for fi ve minutes. Then they watched a funny video where they were required to suppress emotion. This was designed to deplete their self-control resources. After this, they did the Stroop Task – afrequently used experimental test that requires e ff ortful concentration. People in the free thought condition had signi fi cantly higher errors on the Stroop Task compared to the those in prayer condition. These results were consistent with the idea that the initial prayer activity bu ff ered self-control resources against depletion during the emotional suppression task. Those resources were then available to do the Stroop Task, leading to fewer errors.
Ritual activity can also replenish resources after depletion. In another study, Freise and colleagues (Friese, Schweizer, Arnoux, Sutter, & Wänke, 2014) had participants do a suppression task first. This task involved resisting all thoughts about white bears for six minutes (try it!). Then they were assigned to either a prayer or free thought condition. Finally, they did the Stroop Task. Participants who had prayed were found to be significantly better at the Stroop task, indicating that their mental resources had been restored by the prayer more so than just free thinking.
Two other points are also signi ficant. First, in neither of these studies did professed religiosity play a role in the findings, and similar results have been found using mindfulness meditation (Friese, Messner, & Schaffner, 2012). These observations further reinforce the notion that it is ritual, more so than belief, that is crucial to the result. Second, inducing positive mood has also been found to restore self-control after depletion (Tice, Baumeister, Shmueli, & Muraven, 2007). As was discussed in Chapter 1, ritualized behaviors have physiological effects that elevate mood. Thus, one likely reason for why ritual conserves and replenishes mental resources is because it generates positive emotions which, in turn, rejuvenates self-control.
These same effects have been demonstrated in young children as well. Oxford Psychologist Veronika Rybanska tested children (average age 8 years) on the
famous marshmallow test of self-control (Rybanska, McKay, Jong, & Whitehouse, 2018). In the marshmallow test, a marshmallow is put before the child and the child is told that if he/she can resist eating it for 15 seconds, he/she can get another one.
Prior to the test, children engaged in ‘circle games. ’ Circle games are where children sit in a circle and try their best to copy the actions of an adult. In one group, the adult’ s actions were described ritualistically – that is, the reason given for why the actions were done a certain way was because ‘the rules say they must be done that way ’ or because ‘that was the way they have always been done.’ In another group, the adult’ s actions were described instrumentally – that is, they were described in terms of achieving a practical goal: ‘if you do it like this you learn how to dance’ or ‘if you do it like this you learn about animals.’ Rybanska and colleagues found that children in the ritual condition showed signi ficantly greater self-control than those in the instrumental condition. Furthermore, the ritual children did better on tests of ‘executive functions’– the mental ability to organize and execute goal-directed behaviors.
Along with conserving and replenishing mental resources, ritual also strengthens them, making them more generally resilient. In Chapter 1, I discussed a study showing that self-control exercises, such as regularly using hand-grips or avoiding sweets, done over a period of weeks, enabled smokers to more successfully quit the habit (Muraven, 2010). Other studies have used a similar procedure, only with ritual activity (prayer) as the self-control exercise and the goal being to remain sober or faithful to one ’ s signi ficant other (Fincham, Lambert, & Beach, 2010; Lamber, Fincham, Marks, & Stillman, 2010). As with the smokers, the ritual strengthening of self-control was largely successful: prolonged ritual activity increase people’ s ability to remain sober and faithful.
Self-control lies behind most pro-social inclinations. Thus, boosting self-control increases people’ s capacity to express cooperative attributes such as loyalty, goodwill, and commitment. This has been shown in other studies demonstrating that increasing self-control through ritual leads to people being more: forgiving (Lambert, Fincham, Stillman, Graham, & Beach, 2010), faithful (Fincham et al., 2010), sober (Lambert et al., 2010) and grateful (Lambert, Fincham, Braithwaite, Graham, & Beach, 2010). Furthermore, after being provoke, ritual reduces anger and the tendency to engage in retribution (Bremner, Koole, & Bushman, 2011).
Summary
The body of research reviewed in this chapter offers empirical support for the claim that ritual cultivates, builds, conserves, and replenishes the psychological resources necessary for cooperation. In other words, ritual manages psychological resources. These specific resources include: commitment, empathy, generosity, honesty, liking, trust, perceived similarity and the sharing of similar, often sacred, values. These mental/emotion states are the foundation upon which enduring
bonds of mutual concern (social capital) can be constructed. Once constructed, social capital can be put to use in cooperative activity. As admirable as this may be a cautionary note is in order. Ritual builds social cohesion. Often that social cohesion has constructive results – as was the case with the educational improvements lauded earlier by Hanifan. But the ends resulting from ritual cohesion are not necessarily constructive or moral in any universal sense. A key factor identified in the support of terrorist activity was ritual participation (Ginges, Hansen, & Norenzayan, 2009). We build with rituals. What we build, is up to us.
