Episode AI notes
- Participantes de rituales extremos entran en un estado de flujo, characterizado por una percepción de movimiento lento, enfoque intenso, visión periférica borrosa y un sentido de aislamiento de la multitud.
- La antropología y la psicología a menudo existen en compartimentos separados en la academia, pero es importante integrar estas disciplinas para un mejor entendimiento de los rituales.
- Las mediciones fisiológicas en los rituales proporcionan una forma de respaldar las experiencias fenomenológicas de las personas y cuantificar las reacciones emocionales.
- Al igual que los humanos, los animales también participan en comportamientos rituales, pero la experiencia de los rituales humanos va más allá de la simple ritualización individual y se enfoca en la simbolismo y las normas sociales establecidas.
- La ansiedad y la incertidumbre pueden llevar a la ritualización como una forma de restaurar el sentido de control y confianza.
- La participación en rituales puede tener efectos positivos en la salud y el bienestar, como reducir la ansiedad y fortalecer las conexiones sociales.
- Los rituales tienen un papel relevante en la sociedad contemporánea y contribuyen a la construcción de conexiones sociales y a un sentido de pertenencia.
- La ritualización en las organizaciones puede generar una sensación de comunidad y pertenencia entre los empleados, lo que contribuye a una cultura organizativa más positiva y cohesionada.
- Pequeños rituales y actividades compartidas pueden fomentar el trabajo en equipo y fortalecer los vínculos entre los miembros de un grupo.
- El alcohol y los rituales pueden tener beneficios evolutivos al potenciar la creatividad y fortalecer la cohesión social. (Time 0:00:00)
Participantes de rituales extremos entran en un estado de flujo. Fireworkers experience a state similar to ‘flow’ during extreme rituals, characterized by feeling of slow motion, intense focus, blurred peripheral vision, and a sense of isolation from the crowd. Despite heightened excitement and arousal, they do not seem to focus on the pain during the ritual. Transcript: Speaker 1 So what fireworkers say, they describe this state that some psychologists might characterize as flow. They are going into this feeling of slow motion as if time slows down. After focus, so you’re only focused on what’s in front of you. Your peripheral vision gets blurred. And a lot of them will say when they ask them to describe it, they will say there might be 3,000 people there. But at that moment, it’s just you and the fire. So at this moment of very heightened excitement, very heightened arousal, which we can also see in their bodies by the way, with our measurements, I don’t think people focus on the pain. This might be something that you feel afterwards. (Time 0:07:01)
Participantes de rituales extremos entran en un estado de flujo.
Aislamiento de disciplinas y la importancia de su articulación. Validez ecológica. Transcript: Speaker 1 So there is a sense in which anthropology has always been experimental. For example, when it moved from the arms here to the field, anthropologists do not always conduct field work. And now they do. It has also experimented with all sorts of other forms of representing human cultures. But you’re also right that in another sense anthropology and experimentation do not go all together. And that is because today in academia, unfortunately we have these intellectual methodological silos. In part, due to necessity, because there is specialization in academia. And of course we all need to be trained thoroughly in specific methods. Centropologists are trained to use participant observation. Psychologists are the ones who are typically trained to use experimentation. The problem is when these two different sides do not even communicate with each other. So in that sense it is true that most cultural anthropologists never engage with scientific methods, never engage with things like measurement and experimentation. In this sense my work is different. Now I have an affiliation both with the anthropology and the psychology department here. And I am critical of both approaches. So I will go to my colleagues in anthropology and I will tell them that they should be using more measurement and hypothesis testing. And I will go to my friends in psychology and I will tell them that they should take culture more seriously. So in my own work I have tried to combine these two perspectives. So I have been trying to in a sense have my cake and eat it too. And the way I try to do this is by rather than taking participants out of context and moving them into a sterilized lab, I try to bring the lab into context by moving it into the field. And I also try to move back and forth between the lab and the field. Because sometimes when we need to focus on more specific mechanisms that are involved in the phenomenon that we study, then we do need to go to the lab. But at other times when we need to study phenomena that they are dependent on the local context or that they are deeply embedded with meaning, we cannot study those in the lab. So the concept behind my lab is that we work on designing methods and technologies that can then be used to conduct research in real life contexts. In those contexts can be religious temples, they can be sports stadiums, they can be public libraries, they can be the street and wherever real life happens. (Time 0:14:06)
Razones para incorporar mediciones fisiológicas en rituales. Transcript: Speaker 1 So because of the kinds of phenomena that I study, the types of public rituals that are also often very stressful or even painful, because they involve a lot of emotional reactions, I’ve tried to quantify those reactions. One reason for doing this is that we cannot only rely on self-reports and actually through some of my work, we can see that what people perceive their bodily reactions to be is not necessarily, It’s not always the same as what it actually is. Another reason is that these events might last for an entire day and these events are some of the most sacred moments in those people’s lives. So you do not want to interrupt them as they perform them, you cannot do that. So being able to collect these types of unobtrusive, continuous measurements where people can wear a device and then forget that they have it on and go about performing their rituals And later collect the data or do it at a distance, that is very valuable. So the kinds of things that I’ve looked at include heart rate responses during those rituals, electrodermal activity, which is a measure of essentially of how much we sweat and that’s A measure of stress. I’ve also looked at hormonal data collected in people’s saliva or hair. I’ve also looked at data from movement to see how people behave in space, how they mimic each other’s behavior, how close they come to each other in actual space. And of course, this is typically embedded in long-term participant observation. So the idea is not that we give up the first person perspective or our own interpretations to conduct those measurements. The idea is quite the opposite actually, that a lot of the time we take people’s phenomenological experiences so that the way their lived experiences, we take them seriously enough To turn them into testable hypotheses. (Time 0:17:05)
MOBI métodos ritual validez_ecológica
Uso de registros fisiológicos para respaldar experiencias fenomenológicas en rituales. Transcript: Speaker 1 So to give you an example, when in the context of the fire-working ritual that I described in Spain, when I talked to the locals about what it is like to go through the fire, people repeatedly Kept mentioning this feeling that was very hard for them to describe in words. This feeling of oneness, they said that when you go up there, there are 3,000 people, but you feel one with the crowd. You feel this togetherness. Or I talk to groups of Sufi Muslims in Turkey and they specifically talked about their hearts becoming one. So I thought, is this something we can measure? So if we’re indeed talking about emotional alignments and those, the claim is that these emotional alignments converge and people feel it, that they become like one, then we should Be able to see it in their bodies. So we went into the context of those types of rituals and we collected physiological measurements and we indeed see that people’s heart rates converge. They tend to be synchronized during this ritual. And this is a fundamentally social phenomenon because this is not indiscriminate. It’s not just a matter of empathic mirroring. It goes beyond that because we also see that social proximity is a predictor of that synchrony. So the closer people feel to somebody in their social circle, the stronger that synchrony. So these rituals are not merely creating social bonds out of thin air. They bring the people who already share them, the people who are already part of that cultural context into closer communion. (Time 0:19:00)
evidencia experiencia fisiología MOBI registro ritual
Proclividad evolutiva hacia el comportamiento ritual Transcript: Speaker 2 So you’ve obviously spent a lot of time focusing on these pretty extreme rituals, like the Firewalk. But your book is really casting a wider net to talk about ritual in general. So could you just give us some other examples of what you mean by ritual, maybe less extreme, kind of more mundane examples, so we get a fuller sense for what this class of activities includes? Speaker 1 Yeah. Ritual is actually everywhere. So it’s useful to have a definition of ritual. When I talk about ritual, I mean an activity or a sequence of actions that is repetitive and that feels special, where we feel that we have to do it and it is special to us. And yet either has no explicit goal or even when it does, there is no causal connection between that goal and the means by which we try to achieve. For example, brushing your teeth in the morning. It’s very repetitive. It might meet some of the criteria of ritual, but it has a very clear goal. So in my book, it’s not a ritual. Okay. Now, if you were to wave your toothbrush in the air with the belief that it would cleanse your teeth or for that matter, with no belief at all, that would clearly be a ritual. Right. Speaker 2 So like people might talk about their morning coffee ritual or something, but usually what they mean is just kind of a routine, not really a ritual, unless they do something as you’re Saying, they add some elements that are really of unclear causal. Exactly. Speaker 1 So when I prepare my morning coffee, I do it in exactly the same way every day and I have to do it before I go to work or even if I don’t go to work. And the interesting thing is that I will make it, even if I don’t have time to drink it, I will just make it and leave it there. So that’s when it becomes a ritual. Interesting. Okay. Speaker 2 Yeah. I always think about the same thing like in my morning coffee ritual, because there’s one aspect of how I make coffee where I’m like, you know, I don’t know if this actually does anything. It’s where like, because I just make a one cup sort of thing and like you kind of wet the, you wet the grounds. It’s called like blooming the coffee, at least that’s the terminology I remember. And I still do that. I learned that probably 10 years ago. Oh, you should just wet the grounds, wait for 30 seconds and then do it. Speaker 1 But like I often think, does this do any shy look into whether this actually doesn’t, but I just keep doing it. It’s an observation and it’s an important observation because it highlights that first of all, the line between ritual and non ritual sometimes can be blurry. But it’s also important that our need for ritualization relies on certain cognitive proclivities that have been adaptive for us. One of those proclivities is our tendency and our capacity to mimic each other’s actions, especially culturally transmitted actions. So when we copy a recipe, for example, we don’t usually question each individual step. We trust that collective wisdom will be correct and every single step in the recipe must have some reason to be there. So we don’t know why we only have to fill up the pot halfway, but we trust there’s a reason and we just do it. Now because we’re social learners, because we’re very, we’re hyper social animals, this is very important to us because much of what we learn in life comes through other people. So being able to copy what others have done for generations typically is a very good idea. That’s how children learn about the world. And this proclivity is one of those cognitive capacities that really facilitates the adoption and transmission of rituals. Speaker 2 Here when you’re talking about this proclivity, are we sort of getting into this terrain of this over imitation idea where children will often just copy very faithfully what they see Someone else doing, even if they sort of know that the way the person’s doing it isn’t the most efficient or the most direct. Speaker 1 Exactly. Having a toddler in the house right now, I’m coming to observe this, but there are also experiments that show this. And there’s a famous experiment that compared chimps with human children and they showed them this box and they had to perform three or four different types of actions in order to release A treat from the box. In one case, the box was opaque. So you didn’t know what each one of these actions did. So it involved things like sticking a stick into a hole and turning it or tapping onto the box. In another case, the box was transparent. So you could clearly see that half of the steps had absolutely no causal link. There was a false seed link. So inserting the stick didn’t actually do anything. All you had to do was pull the drawer and retrieve the treat. Now the chimps cut to the chase. They skipped all the unnecessary parts, but the children copied the entire procedure. They considered it important to perform the actions exactly the way they were taught. This is one of those examples of how naturally ritual comes to us. Speaker 2 On this same theme of our natural evolved proclivities for ritual or biases toward ritualistic behaviors, you also talk about obsessive compulsive behaviors. Can you say a little bit about that? I found that really fascinating. Speaker 1 So anthropologists and psychologists have observed for a long time now that there are these commonalities between pathological rituals. So in OCD, obsessive-compassive behavior, hyper ritualization is one of the symptoms. There are commonalities between those types of behaviors, between the action patterns that we see in other animals, and between the cultural rituals that we find in all human societies. Some of them have argued that all of these types of rituals, they’re just mental glitches. They’re just another form of OCD. Others have argued that our need for ritual is something that has evolved. That is evolved because it has specific functions for us. That OCD is simply a form of that tendency running wild. Your brain is not getting the feedback that the action has been performed and now it’s time to relax. You just feel compelled to do it again and again and again. Speaker 2 Right. Interesting. Okay. So I’m definitely no expert on OCD, but my memory (Time 0:22:21)
Definición de Ritual Transcript: Speaker 1 Ritual is actually everywhere. So it’s useful to have a definition of ritual. When I talk about ritual, I mean an activity or a sequence of actions that is repetitive and that feels special, where we feel that we have to do it and it is special to us. And yet either has no explicit goal or even when it does, there is no causal connection between that goal and the means by which we try to achieve. For example, brushing your teeth in the morning. It’s very repetitive. It might meet some of the criteria of ritual, but it has a very clear goal. So in my book, it’s not a ritual. Okay. Now, if you were to wave your toothbrush in the air with the belief that it would cleanse your teeth or for that matter, with no belief at all, that would clearly be a ritual. (Time 0:22:44)
definición ritual
Sesgo hacía comportamiento ritual: imitación rígida. Transcript: Speaker 1 Our need for ritualization relies on certain cognitive proclivities that have been adaptive for us. One of those proclivities is our tendency and our capacity to mimic each other’s actions, especially culturally transmitted actions. So when we copy a recipe, for example, we don’t usually question each individual step. We trust that collective wisdom will be correct and every single step in the recipe must have some reason to be there. So we don’t know why we only have to fill up the pot halfway, but we trust there’s a reason and we just do it. Now because we’re social learners, because we’re very, we’re hyper social animals, this is very important to us because much of what we learn in life comes through other people. So being able to copy what others have done for generations typically is a very good idea. That’s how children learn about the world. And this proclivity is one of those cognitive capacities that really facilitates the adoption and transmission of rituals. Speaker 2 Here when you’re talking about this proclivity, are we sort of getting into this terrain of this over imitation idea where children will often just copy very faithfully what they see Someone else doing, even if they sort of know that the way the person’s doing it isn’t the most efficient or the most direct. Speaker 1 Exactly. Having a toddler in the house right now, I’m coming to observe this, but there are also experiments that show this. And there’s a famous experiment that compared chimps with human children and they showed them this box and they had to perform three or four different types of actions in order to release A treat from the box. In one case, the box was opaque. So you didn’t know what each one of these actions did. So it involved things like sticking a stick into a hole and turning it or tapping onto the box. In another case, the box was transparent. So you could clearly see that half of the steps had absolutely no causal link. There was a false seed link. So inserting the stick didn’t actually do anything. All you had to do was pull the drawer and retrieve the treat. Now the chimps cut to the chase. They skipped all the unnecessary parts, but the children copied the entire procedure. They considered it important to perform the actions exactly the way they were taught. This is one of those examples of how naturally ritual comes to us. (Time 0:24:43)
OCD como escape de proclividad humana hacia comportamiento ritual. Transcript: Speaker 1 So anthropologists and psychologists have observed for a long time now that there are these commonalities between pathological rituals. So in OCD, obsessive-compassive behavior, hyper ritualization is one of the symptoms. There are commonalities between those types of behaviors, between the action patterns that we see in other animals, and between the cultural rituals that we find in all human societies. Some of them have argued that all of these types of rituals, they’re just mental glitches. They’re just another form of OCD. Others have argued that our need for ritual is something that has evolved. That is evolved because it has specific functions for us. That OCD is simply a form of that tendency running wild. Your brain is not getting the feedback that the action has been performed and now it’s time to relax. You just feel compelled to do it again and again and again. (Time 0:27:34)
evidencia evolución experimento función neurosis rigidez ritual simios
OCD postparto como ejemplo de función evolutiva de una obsesión. Postpartum OCD involves obsessive thoughts about harming the baby and compulsive actions to prevent it, which could be adaptive in ensuring infant safety. The condition can affect males too, and while the exact mechanism is unknown, it may be linked to olfactory cues or mimicking the mother’s behavior. This demonstrates an evolutionary function of obsession in protecting the vulnerable infant. Transcript: Speaker 1 There’s something called postpartum OCD, which is related to these obsessive thoughts about hurting the baby and the compulsion to perform actions to prevent that from happening. And you can clearly see how this might be adaptive. If there’s any time to be obsessive about hurting a baby, that will be when you have one in your lap. And interestingly, there’s postpartum OCD even affecting males. We don’t know the exact mechanism by which this works, whether it’s some sort of olfactory cues or simply mimicking the mother’s behavior, but it’s there. And you can clearly see why this would be an adaptive thing to have. (Time 0:29:18)
OCD postparto como ejemplo de función evolutiva de una obsesión.
Comportamiento ritual en animales y diferencias con ser humano. Transcript: Speaker 1 Obviously, most people are familiar with rituals in birds, mating rituals. Sometimes some of them are very flamboyant, some of them are very elaborate. Barre birds, for example, they construct these elaborate structures to attract the females, and they decorate them with different objects, which are actually cultural specific. So different populations of barre birds have different tastes. But closer to our own lineage, we see it in many mammals. We see, for example, giraffes, they have these beautiful mating dances where they end, and they find their necks together. And neither are near relatives. So chimpanzees. In recent years, there’s a lot of evidence on chimpanzee ritual. Jane Goodall described this behavior that chimpanzees sometimes exhibit when they approach a waterfall. She called it the waterfall dance. They seem to be performing some kind of collective ceremony. They pant and hoot, and they get in this frenzied state, and they swing from branches, and then eventually they just sit silent and watch the waterfall. More recently, scientists have recorded videos of chimps in West Africa in various locations, visiting certain trees that, for whatever reason, they seem to be special to them. So they’ll travel long distances to visit those trees, and they will drum on their hollow trunks, and sometimes they will pile rocks either inside the tree or in front of those trees. Much like humans in many cultures do when they build these currents, the rock piles that mark sacred locations. Obviously, we can’t know what’s happening in their minds, but this is a behavior that clearly, if we see it in any human population, we would readily identify it as ritual. Right. Speaker 2 So then, what’s so distinctive about the human experience or practice of ritual relative to these other things? What are the hallmarks of distinctively human-kind of ritual-like behavior? Speaker 1 I think what is distinct about human resources is that we take them to a whole other level and we embed them with symbolism, and we turn them into social norms. I see. So it goes beyond our individual need for ritualization, which we find in many different species. In human societies, rituals become a must for members of any particular group. (Time 0:30:26)
animales cultura homo_sapiens ritual símbolos
Ritualización como respuesta a la incertidumbre costosa tiene efectos funcionales. Transcript: Speaker 1 We tend to find ritual wherever there’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. And wherever there’s stakes are high. So this happens across various domains. If you wanted to observe spontaneous ritualization, so the kinds of things that we might call superstitions or we might call idiosyncratic individual rituals, then some of the best Places to go to would be a casino, a war zone, a hospital, or of course a sports stadium. We see that athletes perform a lot of rituals and you might expect that the best athletes will have less need to turn to ritual because there are better skills. In fact, we see the opposite. Better athletes study show, perform more rituals and they have more superstitions. And perhaps the explanation for this is that they compete for higher stakes. So they actually face greater uncertainty. There’s even evidence to show that athletes perform better after performing those rituals. This obviously does not happen through some kind of magical causation. Analysis show that the mediating factor there is their sense of control and confidence. Performing those rituals gives you an illusion of having control over what might otherwise be an uncontrollable situation. When you’re in the casino, it’s a game of luck. Even in competitive sports, there are other players around. There’s always luck involved. So gaining a sense of control can be psychologically very useful. (Time 0:34:27)
ansiedad comportamiento evolución función rigidez ritual
Ansiedad como respuesta del organismo a la incertidumbre en la predicción. Transcript: Speaker 1 The idea here is that our cognitive architecture sets that our brain is constantly seeking to make predictions. Our brain is a predictive device. We try to anticipate what’s coming. We don’t learn everything from scratch. We use cues from the environment, our past knowledge, and our perceptual biases to make those kinds of predictions. If I wake up and my band is shaking, I expect that the ceiling might fall because that might be an earthquake. I don’t wait to see every time what’s going to happen. This happens at a low level, at a perceptual level. For example, we all have a blind spot in our eyes, which we’re not even aware of most of the time, because our brain fills in the missing information. And this happens at a higher level as well. When we engage in a conversation, we anticipate the words that are going to come up based on the context. So our brain constantly makes these kinds of predictions. And it is when it cannot make successful predictions, where predictive capacity is limited that we experience anxiety. Right. And that of course is when there’s uncertainty in our environment, where we don’t know what to expect. (Time 0:36:11)
Ansiedad rigidiza el comportamiento. The Tamil Hindu festival involves painful rituals such as piercing the body with needles, hooks, and skewers, carrying large chariots and structures, walking on shoes made of upright nails, and enduring the scorching tropical sun. The festival includes a procession lasting up to six hours towards the temple of Lord Morgan, where participants climb up a hill carrying their burdens. The recurring prominent feature of pain in these collective rituals brings benefits such as collective suffering, which is utilized by groups like militaries, gangs, and religions. Transcript: Speaker 1 Even in laboratory setting, when we stress people up and then we measure their behavior, by looking at these defining characteristics of ritual, such as repetition and rigidity and Redundancy. We find that when people get stressed, their behavior becomes more ritualized. And later we go into real life settings, places like Hindu temples and Mauritius. And we measure people’s physiological responses, as well as their perceived levels of anxiety. And we see that after performing their cultural rituals at the local temple, compared to a control group who didn’t, they’re better able to cope with anxiety. (Time 0:37:27)
El rol del dolor en la construcción de vínculos. Transcript: Speaker 1 There seem to be a lot of benefits to collective suffering. Groups like militaries and gangs and of course religions, they have used these kinds of rituals. They have used collective suffering to induce a sense of group bonding for a good reason. So those types of rituals, they can tap onto a number of different mechanisms at the same time. One of those mechanisms being the release of endorphins. So we know that prolonged suffering triggers the release of endorphins. This is what we call the runners high. This is something we have documented at least indirectly in my research in Mauritius. And endorphins are implicated in social bonding. We know from other studies as well that when people engage in sports together or when they dance together, this triggers the release of endorphins, which helps them bond with one another. Another mechanism might work in a very different way, but complementary. When I go through a painful experience together, to my mind, this is a signal that we are in a sense related. So if you think about the most difficult times of your life, the times that you have cried and that you have suffered, the people who are standing next to you, the people you hugged and Cried with, those will be the members of your immediate family. When you go, let’s say, to the battlefield and you fight with somebody, soldier to soldier, you get the same kind of visceral bonding that you get with your family members. And it’s no accident that people have fought together. They call each other brothers in arms or sisters. You see the same thing with members of religious organizations, especially when they go through these kinds of highly rousing, often very painful ceremonies. So shared suffering signals to bring a sense of kinship. (Time 0:40:25)
Benefits of Collective Suffering Collective suffering has been used by groups to induce a sense of group bonding through various mechanisms such as the release of endorphins, triggering a sense of relatedness and kinship. Prolonged suffering triggers the release of endorphins which aid in social bonding, and going through painful experiences together signals a sense of kinship and relatedness, similar to the bonding experienced with immediate family members. This kind of bonding is observed in soldiers and members of religious organizations who go through highly rousing and painful ceremonies. Additionally, shared activities and behaviors such as moving together, dressing similarly, and behaving severely can also contribute to a sense of kinship. Transcript: Speaker 1 There seem to be a lot of benefits to collective suffering. Groups like militaries and gangs and of course religions, they have used these kinds of rituals. They have used collective suffering to induce a sense of group bonding for a good reason. So those types of rituals, they can tap onto a number of different mechanisms at the same time. One of those mechanisms being the release of endorphins. So we know that prolonged suffering triggers the release of endorphins. This is what we call the runners high. This is something we have documented at least indirectly in my research in Mauritius. And endorphins are implicated in social bonding. We know from other studies as well that when people engage in sports together or when they dance together, this triggers the release of endorphins, which helps them bond with one another. Another mechanism might work in a very different way, but complementary. When I go through a painful experience together, to my mind, this is a signal that we are in a sense related. So if you think about the most difficult times of your life, the times that you have cried and that you have suffered, the people who are standing next to you, the people you hugged and Cried with, those will be the members of your immediate family. When you go, let’s say, to the battlefield and you fight with somebody, soldier to soldier, you get the same kind of visceral bonding that you get with your family members. And it’s no accident that people have fought together. They call each other brothers in arms or sisters. You see the same thing with members of religious organizations, especially when they go through these kinds of highly rousing, often very painful ceremonies. So shared suffering signals to bring a sense of kinship. This can be done in other sorts of ways as well, when we move together, when we dress similarly, when we behave severely, (Time 0:40:25)
Los rituales extremos verifican declaraciones de pertenencia y lealtad. Transcript: Speaker 1 Another way that these painful rituals can do is that they can communicate important information to other group members, especially the kind of information that is very hard to observe. And this is very crucial for groups of people who rely on cooperation to achieve their goals. What I mean by that is that I can easily vouch allegiance to any particular group verbally, but talk is cheap. Nobody really knows if I’m serious about it. So if we are to join a military group, and we’re going to the battlefield together, I can say that I’m loyal to the group, but you will never know until it’s until we’re in the battlefield. And then maybe I can maybe I’ll run away and expose you to grave danger. The only way to know is by imposing a cost of membership in advance. So somebody who’s willing to walk on fire, somebody who’s willing to put a skewer through its cheeks, somebody who’s willing to withstand a beating, to be a member of that group, the Rest of the group can be pretty certain that they’re serious about their involvement with the group and they’re seriously committed to the ideals of that group. And by sending out this signal, everybody benefits. The transmitter of the signal benefits because their status within the community is increased, which is what we see in the research. And other community members benefit because they’re better able to discern those who are cooperators. And they can preferentially relate to them. And even the system itself benefits in the sense that when somebody undertakes great costs to be a member of that group, that signals to outsiders and potential members of that group That this is a group worth joining, because people go to great lengths to join it. (Time 0:42:32)
dolor evolución función ritual
La sincronía promueve la identificación, confianza y vinculación. Transcript: Speaker 2 Yes, so in so many collective rituals, we see that one of the most common elements they have is music, some sense of rhythm, very often dancing, or otherwise synchronized movement. Speaker 1 It could be marching, it could be chanting in unison and so forth. And there’s a lot of research to suggest that this type of synchronized movement greatly controls greatly contributes to bonding between participants. For example, in a study that my colleagues and I did in the lab, we had people come in and either engage in a sequence of actions. It was a little bit like a choreography performed to the beat of a metronome and in the, in pairs would do this either synchronously or asynchronously. And we measured a number of outcomes and we see that those who were more synchronized with their partners, they felt more similar to them, they felt that the interaction was more cooperative, They liked each other more, they had higher levels of endorphin release, which is implicated in social bonding. And finally, they trusted each other more, not just based on self-reports, but also based on their behavior in a trust game, which is an economic game where people actually have to invest Their own money onto another person. (Time 0:45:02)
The Power of Synchronized Movement and Collective Effervescence Synchronized movement in armies, even in non-ground operating branches like the Air Force, creates a sense of muscular bonding and unity. This is known as collective effervescence, described by Durkheim as a transformative feeling that turns individuals into a cohesive unit during high-intensity rituals. Transcript: Speaker 1 Maybe once upon a time it made sense as a practice of tactical maneuvers in the battlefield. Today, nobody goes marching into the battlefield. It will be suicidal to do so. So it seems like a relic of the past, but what do armies continue to do it? Even branches that never engage in ground operations, like the Air Force. And the answer to this is precisely because of those effects of synchronous movement, by engaging in those kinds of activities, people get this visceral sense of what some people have Called muscular bonding. By acting like one, we come to feel like one. Speaker 2 And this is a very well-documented phenomenon. Yeah, so interesting. So when we’re talking about this sort of group effects of ritual, you also mentioned this notion that I think goes back to Durkheim of collective effervescence. Could you just define for us what collective effervescence is and whether it sort of, you know, does that arise in these kinds of collective movement, synchronized movement? Yeah. Situations or when does that arise? So Durkheim described this as this ineffable feeling. Mm-hmm. Speaker 1 Perhaps like goosebumps on the back of your neck, or he described as a jolt of electricity permeating a group of people who are engaged in those high intensity rituals and transforming Them from an assortment of individuals into a cohesive unit, into a community. All right. This is something that a lot of us might have felt in different contexts. (Time 0:46:37)
The Power of Rituals in Enhancing Well-being Rituals have a profound impact on individual and collective well-being. Personal experiences such as witnessing extravagant firework displays can evoke a sense of collective effervescence. Rituals not only allay anxiety in the moment and bond groups, but also have long-term positive effects. Participation in everyday ceremonies has been found to reduce anxiety levels and enhance overall well-being, even in cases where rituals may seem risky or painful at first glance. Transcript: Speaker 2 I definitely have a distinct memory of this collective effervescence feeling. When I was a kid, we used to go. I grew up near Washington, D.C., and my dad used to take us to the firework displays on the national mall, and so you’d have thousands of people packed in bathed in the light of this really Extravagant fireworks display. And I definitely remember, as you say, getting the chills and just feeling like it was a special effervescence moment. Okay. So we’ve talked a little bit about the various positive effects of ritual, how they can allay your anxiety in the moment, and how they can bond a group to each other. You do talk a little bit about participation in rituals and our well-being on sort of the longer term, which is really interesting. So what’s the evidence that rituals can actually enhance our well-being? This is one of the most fascinating things that I’ve come to to learn about rituals through my research. Speaker 1 In many different contexts, you hear claims that people enhance their health and well-being by participating in those rituals. Even rituals at a first glance might seem risky, painful, or even outright dangerous, and an impediment to your health and well-being. But in fact, in my studies, I find the opposite. Just as people claim, we see that when they engage in everyday ceremonies, that helps them reduce their anxiety levels. (Time 0:48:33)
The Impact of Participating in Rituals on Health and Well-being Participating in rituals, whether everyday or more intense, can reduce anxiety levels and help individuals form social connections, ultimately increasing their quality of life and well-being. Studies show that social support networks act as a buffer against anxiety, leading to lower blood pressure and better overall health. Highly ritualized religious or secular communities play a fundamental role in facilitating these social connections, thus contributing directly to individuals’ health and well-being. Transcript: Speaker 1 In many different contexts, you hear claims that people enhance their health and well-being by participating in those rituals. Even rituals at a first glance might seem risky, painful, or even outright dangerous, and an impediment to your health and well-being. But in fact, in my studies, I find the opposite. Just as people claim, we see that when they engage in everyday ceremonies, that helps them reduce their anxiety levels. When they engage in other types of more exciting or even more painful ceremonies, that helps people afford social connections. That in turn helps them increase their quality of life, their well-being. And we know from other studies that social support networks are one of the best buffers against anxiety. People have better social support networks, actually have lower blood pressure, because they have somebody to turn to in times of need. They have closer friends, they have more family members living closer to them, and so on and so forth. Participating those religious or secular communities that are highly ritualized helps people force those kinds of social connections. They are fundamental to our well-being. We are social animals, and our social links are very important to us, and they feed back directly to our health. (Time 0:49:28)
The Relevance of Rituals in Contemporary Society The human need for ritual is primeval and extends beyond religion, predating religion and existing independently of it. Although we are used to associating rituals with religion, they are not necessarily on the decline in contemporary globalized society, as rituals are found everywhere and are deeply ingrained in human culture, irrespective of religious affiliation. Transcript: Speaker 2 A lot of the rituals that we end up talking about here are sort of religious, although there are these secular ones, as you mentioned. Would you say that in general there is kind of a worrying trend that a collective rituals are kind of on the wane in contemporary globalized society? Speaker 1 I don’t think they are necessarily on the wane. The way I say it, the human need for ritual is really primeval, and you find ritual everywhere. We are used to thinking of ritual as related to religion. My view is that ritual predates and extends beyond religion. Religion has claimed a monopoly on ritual for a long time, but what we see in contemporary contexts, especially in the West, is that as religion retreats, as more and more people identify As (Time 0:50:52)
The Decline of Rituals and Collective Experiences in the Contemporary World In the contemporary world, there are more opportunities for people to opt out of rituals and collective experiences. This could lead to a sector of the population equating ritual with superstition and choosing to opt out of these experiences, potentially missing out on a core part of being human and building social connections. The problem may be the other way around, as in a contemporary context people live an extremely different way of life than their ancestors, with more mobility and fewer social support networks. Transcript: Speaker 2 I guess what I’m thinking is there are more opportunities in the contemporary world for people to opt out of rituals, collective and collective experiences. In the past, you would have had no option but to participate in the rituals in your culture, in your community, in your village, and so on. I just wonder whether there is some sector of the population that is just kind of like, oh, it equates ritual with superstition, and so just kind of like, opts out of all of these experiences, And in doing so is actually sort of missing out on a core part of being human and a core part of building social connection and that sort of thing. So I know what you mean, and I think that it might, the problem here, might be the other way around. Speaker 1 In a contemporary context, we live an extremely different way of life than our ancestors used to live, at least in your average Western context. You have more mobility than ever before. You have more people who move away from their birthplace. They’re missing out on their social support network. (Time 0:52:10)
Value of Ritualization in Organizational Culture Ritualization in organizations provides value by creating a sense of community and belonging among employees. Contrasting workplace cultures between Greece and Denmark highlight the importance of ritualization in shaping employee experience. The traditional approach of prioritizing work over any form of socialization is seen as antiquated, while the Danish culture emphasizes communal activities such as group coffee breaks and shared lunches as meaningful rituals. These rituals serve to foster connections and a sense of togetherness in the workplace, ultimately contributing to a more cohesive and positive organizational culture. Transcript: Speaker 1 Is that something people ask you to do? It is, and it’s actually something that is increasingly in my mind. One particular time when I became aware of the value of ritualization in organizations is when I moved from Greece to Denmark to very different cultures, especially when it comes to The workplace. In Greece, I was used to a workplace that was much more impersonal. You just, you get in, you put your time, you get out, you’re not expected to do anything but work. In fact, I remember when I got my first job, my boss would insist that even when I was waiting tables, even when there was nobody at the restaurant between dinner and lunch. And even after every task had been done, that we were not to sit down or socialize or engage in other kinds of pleasant activities. I think that’s a very antiquated way of looking at the workplace. When I moved to Denmark, I was shocked at how much of working time was not actually about work. And for a long time, I hadn’t figured out what it was about. I felt that it was just about wasting time. I came to realize that it was actually about ritual. So every Monday, for example, Monday morning, we would have coffee and cake altogether. At lunchtime, we would all go to the canteen and eat together. But even if somebody had already eaten or was hungry or brought their own food, they would join us. (Time 0:54:53)
Fostering Team Bonding through Rituals and Activities Implementing small rituals and sharing highlights of the week at lab meetings can foster a positive environment. Organizing activities like dinner, retreats, or laser tag can also contribute to team bonding and arousal in various forms. Transcript: Speaker 2 So now do you try to kind of have you ported some of those kinds of practices and behaviors into your own lab setting? I do. Speaker 1 Yeah. This semester, for example, we start each one of our meetings with a small ritual, which is every one of us talks about the highlight of the past week. Oh, nice. And in other places where I’ve worked, we’ve regularly organized things like Friday dinners or retreats or various types of ritualized gatherings. Speaker 2 But what about pain? I mean, have you ever brought pain into your lab meetings? It seems like that’s a powerful. Speaker 1 They can be a powerful way of bonding, but I think it has to be done very carefully. But one thing we did in my previous work workplace is that every once in a while, we’ll gather together and we’ll go play laser tag. So arousal can come in various forms. That does not have to be pain, what I’m saying. You’re right. (Time 0:57:29)
The Evolutionary Benefits of Alcohol and Rituals The book ‘Drunk’ explores the evolutionary benefits of alcohol, such as enhancing creativity and boosting social cohesion. It argues that activities like drinking and rituals, which may seem wasteful, actually serve important functions and can work in synergy, as seen in many types of rituals where intoxication and collective movement go hand in hand. Transcript: Speaker 1 Another very interesting book, honestly, it’s a book I would have liked to have written. I love that book, both because of its style and because of its content. It’s Ted Slingerland’s book that’s called Drunk. And I think the subtitle is something like how we sit, danced and stumbled our way into civilization. So in a sense, there’s a similar line of argumentation there. The author looks at something that seems to be a glitch or wasteful activity or even worse, a dangerous one. But they go into show what the evolutionary benefits of alcohol and other intoxicants might have been for enhancing creativity, for boosting social cohesion, and so on and so forth. So it’s a very similar argument to what I often make about ritual. Speaker 2 Yeah, so I haven’t read the Paul Bloom book you mentioned, but I have read Ted’s book and I definitely also enjoyed it a ton. And as you say, there’s a lot of interesting parallels, a lot of ways in which drinking and ritual, as you say, have similar functions where they seem like they are maybe ill-advised Or silly or wasteful, but in fact, they end up. Absolutely. And sometimes these things can work in synergy. For example, we see that in many types of rituals, you will see intoxication as being part of the experience. And also where you find intoxication, you also find dancing and kind of collective movement sort of things. So yeah, they do kind of go hand in hand a lot of times. All right, well Demetris, thanks so much for doing this interview. This is again a super cool book, Congrats on it, and thanks for joining us. Thank you. Speaker 3 Thanks for the question. (Time 0:59:41)