The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework.

Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psychology of ritual, this article provides an organizing framework to understand recent empirical work from social psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience. Our framework focuses on three primary regulatory functions of rituals: regulation of (a) emotions, (b) performance goal states, and (c) social connection. We examine the possible mechanisms underlying each function by considering the bottom-up processes that emerge from the physical features of rituals and top-down processes that emerge from the psychological meaning of rituals. Our framework, by appreciating the value of psychological theory, generates novel predictions and enriches our understanding of ritual and human behavior more broadly.

When Novel Rituals Lead to Intergroup Bias: Evidence From Economic Games and Neurophysiology.

Long-established rituals in preexisting cultural groups have been linked to the cultural evolution of group cooperation. We tested the prediction that novel rituals-arbitrary hand and body gestures enacted in a stereotypical and repeated fashion-can inculcate intergroup bias in newly formed groups. In four experiments, participants practiced novel rituals at home for 1 week (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or once in the lab (Experiment 3) and were divided into minimal in-groups and out-groups. Our results offer mixed support for the hypothesis that novel rituals promote intergroup bias. Specifically, we found a modest effect for daily repeated rituals but a null effect for rituals enacted only once. These results suggest that novel rituals can inculcate bias, but only when certain features are present: Rituals must be sufficiently elaborate and repeated to lead to bias. Taken together, our results offer modest support that novel rituals can promote intergroup bias.

Recognizing religion's dark side: Religious ritual increases antisociality and hinders self-control.

The target article develops an account of religious prosociality that is driven by increases in self-control. We suggest this account is incomplete. Although religion might increase prosociality to the in-group, it decreases it to the much larger out-group. Rituals, for example, lead to out-group derogation. We also challenge the link between religion and improved self-control, offering evidence that religion hinders self-control.

When alterations are violations: Moral outrage and punishment in response to (even minor) alterations to rituals.

From Catholics performing the sign of the cross since the 4th century to Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance since the 1890s, group rituals (i.e., predefined sequences of symbolic actions) have strikingly consistent features over time. Seven studies (N = 4,213) document the sacrosanct nature of rituals: Because group rituals symbolize sacred group values, even minor alterations to them provoke moral outrage and punishment. In Pilot Studies A and B, fraternity members who failed to complete initiation activities that were more ritualistic elicited relatively greater moral outrage and hazing from their fraternity brothers. Study 1 uses secular holiday rituals to explore the dimensions of ritual alteration-both physical and psychological-that elicit moral outrage. Study 2 suggests that altering a ritual elicits outrage even beyond the extent to which the ritual alteration is seen as violating descriptive and injunctive norms. In Study 3, group members who viewed male circumcision as more ritualistic (i.e., Jewish vs. Muslim participants) expressed greater moral outrage in response to a proposal to alter circumcision to make it safer. Study 4 uses the Pledge of Allegiance ritual to explore how the intentions of the person altering the ritual influence observers' moral outrage and punishment. Finally, in Study 5, even minor alterations elicited comparable levels of moral outrage to major alterations of the Jewish Passover ritual. Across both religious and secular rituals, the more ingroup members believed that rituals symbolize sacred group values, the more they protected their rituals-by punishing those who violated them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A sacred commitment: How rituals promote group survival.

Religious groups have survived for thousands of years despite drastic changes in society. One reason for their successful survival is the proliferation of group rituals (i.e. meaningful sequences of actions characterized by rigidity, formality, and repetition). We propose that rituals enhance religious group survival not only by signaling external commitment but also by fostering internal commitment toward the group in three ways: (1) enhancing belief in the group's values ('committed cognition'), (2) increasing the desire to maintain membership in the group ('committed affect'), and (3) increasing contributions to the welfare of the group ('committed behavior'). We conclude with a call for new empirical research on how participating in rituals can enhance internal commitment toward one's group (116/120).

Rituals decrease the neural response to performance failure.

Rituals are found in all types of performance domains, from high-stakes athletics and military to the daily morning preparations of the working family. Yet despite their ubiquity and widespread importance for humans, we know very little of ritual's causal basis and how (if at all) they facilitate goal-directed performance. Here, in a fully pre-registered pre/post experimental design, we examine a candidate proximal mechanism, the error-related negativity (ERN), in testing the prediction that ritual modulates neural performance-monitoring. Participants completed an arbitrary ritual-novel actions repeated at home over one week-followed by an executive function task in the lab during electroencephalographic (EEG) recording. Results revealed that relative to pre rounds, participants showed a reduced ERN in the post rounds, after completing the ritual in the lab. Despite a muted ERN, there was no evidence that the reduction in neural monitoring led to performance deficit (nor a performance improvement). Generally, the findings are consistent with the longstanding view that ritual buffers against uncertainty and anxiety. Our results indicate that ritual guides goal-directed performance by regulating the brain's response to personal failure.

The mere presence of an outgroup member disrupts the brain's feedback-monitoring system.

Much of human learning happens in the social world. A person's social identity-the groups to which they belong, the people with whom they identify-is a powerful cue that can affect our goal-directed behaviors, often implicitly. In the present experiment, we explored the underlying neural mechanisms driving these processes, testing hypotheses derived from social identity theory. In a within-subjects design, participants underwent a minimal group manipulation where they were randomly assigned to an arbitrary ingroup. In two blocks of the experiment, participants were asked to complete a task for money while being observed by an ingroup member and outgroup member separately. Results revealed that being observed by an ingroup or outgroup member led to divergent patterns of neural activity associated with feedback monitoring, namely the feedback-related negativity (FRN). Receiving feedback in the presence of an ingroup member produced a typical FRN signal, but the FRN was dampened while receiving feedback in the presence of an outgroup member. Further, this differentiated neural pattern was exaggerated in people who reported greater intergroup bias. Together, the mere presence of a person can alter how the brain adaptively monitors feedback, impairing the reinforcement learning signal when the person observing is an outgroup member.

Emotion down-regulation diminishes cognitive control: a neurophysiological investigation.

Traditional models of cognitive control have explained performance monitoring as a "cold" cognitive process, devoid of emotion. In contrast to this dominant view, a growing body of clinical and experimental research indicates that cognitive control and its neural substrates, in particular the error-related negativity (ERN), are moderated by affective and motivational factors, reflecting the aversive experience of response conflict and errors. To add to this growing line of research, here we use the classic emotion regulation paradigm-a manipulation that promotes the cognitive reappraisal of emotion during task performance-to test the extent to which affective variation in the ERN is subject to emotion reappraisal, and also to explore how emotional regulation of the ERN might influence behavioral performance. In a within-subjects design, 41 university students completed 3 identical rounds of a go/no-go task while electroencephalography was recorded. Reappraisal instructions were manipulated so that participants either down-regulated or up-regulated emotional involvement, or completed the task normally, without engaging any reappraisal strategy (control). Results showed attenuated ERN amplitudes when participants down-regulated their emotional experience. In addition, a mediation analysis revealed that the association between reappraisal style and attenuated ERN was mediated by changes in reported emotion ratings. An indirect effects model also revealed that down-regulation predicted sensitivity of error-monitoring processes (difference ERN), which, in turn, predicted poorer task performance. Taken together, these results suggest that the ERN appears to have a strong affective component that is associated with indices of cognitive control and behavioral monitoring.