ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Ingredients of 'rituals' and their cognitive underpinnings.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Leverage the power of ritual to improve community health worker efficacy and public health outcomes: Lessons from Bihar, India.The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia · 2022Review
- Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Ritual explained: interdisciplinary answers to Tinbergen's four questions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Ritual morphospace revisited: the form, function and factor structure of ritual practice.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Perinatal risk and the cultural ecology of health in Bihar, India.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
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Abstract
Ritual is not a proper scientific object, as the term is used to denote disparate forms of behaviour, on the basis of a faint family resemblance. Indeed, a variety of distinct cognitive mechanisms are engaged, in various combinations, in the diverse interactions called 'rituals' - and each of these mechanisms deserves study, in terms of its evolutionary underpinnings and cultural consequences. We identify four such mechanisms that each appear in some 'rituals', namely (i) the normative scripting of actions; (ii) the use of interactions to signal coalitional identity, affiliation, cohesiveness; (iii) magical claims based on intuitive expectations of contagion; and (iv) ritualized behaviour based on a specific handling of the flow of behaviour. We describe the cognitive and evolutionary background to each of these potential components of 'rituals', and their effects on cultural transmission. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.
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