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.

The Empirical Case for Acquiescing to Intuition.

Will people follow their intuition even when they explicitly recognize that it is irrational to do so? Dual-process models of judgment and decision making are often based on the assumption that the correction of errors necessarily follows the detection of errors. But this assumption does not always hold. People can explicitly recognize that their intuitive judgment is wrong but nevertheless maintain it, a phenomenon known as acquiescence. Although anecdotes and experimental studies suggest that acquiescence occurs, the empirical case for acquiescence has not been definitively established. In four studies-using the ratio-bias paradigm, a lottery exchange game, blackjack, and a football coaching decision-we tested acquiescence using recently established criteria. We provide clear empirical support for acquiescence: People can have a faulty intuitive belief about the world (Criterion 1), acknowledge the belief is irrational (Criterion 2), but follow their intuition nonetheless (Criterion 3)-even at a cost.

Investing in karma: when wanting promotes helping.

People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as when they wait for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate's favor by doing good deeds proactively. Four experiments support this karmic-investment hypothesis. When people want an outcome over which they have little control, their donations of time and money increase (experiments 1 and 2), but their participation in other rewarding activities does not (experiment 1b). In addition, at a job fair, job seekers who feel the process is outside (vs. within) their control make more generous pledges to charities (experiment 3). Finally, karmic investments increase optimism about a desired outcome (experiment 4). We conclude by discussing the role of personal control and magical beliefs in this phenomenon.

Introducing conspiracy intuitions to better understand conspiracy beliefs.

Belief in conspiracy theories results from a combination of intuitive and deliberative cognitive processes (van Prooijen, Klein, & Milosevic Dordevic, 2020). We propose a novel construct, conspiracy intuitions, the subjective sense that an event or circumstance is not adequately explained or accounted for by existing narratives, potentially for nefarious reasons, as an initial stage in the acquisition of conspiracy beliefs that can be distinguished from conspiracy beliefs themselves. We draw on both the conspiracy theory and magical thinking literature to make a case for conspiracy intuitions, suggest methods for measuring them, and argue that efforts to combat conspiracy theories in society could benefit from strategies that attend to the intuitive properties of the proto-beliefs that precede them.

When "enemies" become close: Relationship formation among Palestinians and Jewish Israelis at a youth camp.

Having close relationships with outgroup members is an especially powerful form of intergroup contact that can reduce prejudice. Rather than examine the consequences of forming close outgroup relationships, which has previously been studied as part of intergroup contact theory, we examine how outgroup relationships-relative to ingroup relationships-form in the first place. We collected 7 years of data from Jewish Israeli and Palestinian teenagers attending a 3-week summer camp at Seeds of Peace, one of the largest conflict transformation programs in the world. We tested how being assigned to share an activity group (e.g., bunk, table, dialogue group) influenced relationship formation among outgroup pairs (Jewish Israeli-Palestinian) compared with ingroup pairs (Israeli-Israeli, Palestinian-Palestinian). Existing research offers competing theories for whether propinquity is more impactful for the formation of ingroup or outgroup relationships; here, we found propinquity was significantly more impactful for outgroup relationships. Whereas 2 ingroup participants were 4.46 times more likely to become close if they were in the same versus different bunk, for example, 2 outgroup participants were 11.72 times more likely to become close. We propose that sharing an activity group is especially powerful for more dissimilar dyads because people are less likely to spontaneously engage with outgroup members in ways that promote relationships. Thus, structured, meaningful engagement can counteract homophily. Furthermore, in this setting, propinquity proved to be an even better predictor of outgroup (vs. ingroup) relationship formation than that pair's initial outgroup attitudes. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for intergroup processes and relationship formation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Handshaking promotes deal-making by signaling cooperative intent.

We examine how a simple handshake-a gesture that often occurs at the outset of social interactions-can influence deal-making. Because handshakes are social rituals, they are imbued with meaning beyond their physical features. We propose that during mixed-motive interactions, a handshake is viewed as a signal of cooperative intent, increasing people's cooperative behavior and affecting deal-making outcomes. In Studies 1a and 1b, pairs who chose to shake hands at the onset of integrative negotiations obtained better joint outcomes. Study 2 demonstrates the causal impact of handshaking using experimental methodology. Study 3 suggests a driver of the cooperative consequence of handshaking: negotiators expected partners who shook hands to behave more cooperatively than partners who avoided shaking hands or partners whose nonverbal behavior was unknown; these expectations of cooperative intent increased negotiators' own cooperation. Study 4 uses an economic game to demonstrate that handshaking increased cooperation even when handshakes were uninstructed (vs. instructed). Further demonstrating the primacy of signaling cooperative intent, handshaking actually reduced cooperation when the action signaled ill intent (e.g., when the hand-shaker was sick; Study 5). Finally, in Study 6, executives assigned to shake hands before a more antagonistic, distributive negotiation were less likely to lie about self-benefiting information, increasing cooperation even to their own detriment. Together, these studies provide evidence that handshakes, ritualistic behaviors imbued with meaning beyond mere physical contact, signal cooperative intent and promote deal-making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Why people are reluctant to tempt fate.

The present research explored the belief that it is bad luck to "tempt fate." Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that people do indeed have the intuition that actions that tempt fate increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. Studies 3-6 examined our claim that the intuition is due, in large part, to the combination of the automatic tendencies to attend to negative prospects and to use accessibility as a cue when judging likelihood. Study 3 demonstrated that negative outcomes are more accessible following actions that tempt fate than following actions that do not tempt fate. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that the heightened accessibility of negative outcomes mediates the elevated perceptions of likelihood. Finally, Study 6 examined the automatic nature of the underlying processes. The types of actions that are thought to tempt fate as well as the role of society and culture in shaping this magical belief are discussed.

Closing your eyes to follow your heart: Avoiding information to protect a strong intuitive preference.

Rationally, people should want to receive information that is costless and relevant for a decision. But people sometimes choose to remain ignorant. The current paper identifies intuitive-deliberative conflict as a driver of information avoidance. Moreover, we examine whether people avoid information not only to protect their feelings or experiences, but also to protect the decision itself. We predict that people avoid information that could encourage a more thoughtful, deliberative decision to make it easier to enact their intuitive preference. In Studies 1 and 2, people avoid learning the calories in a tempting dessert and compensation for a boring task to protect their preferences to eat the dessert and work on a more enjoyable task. The same people who want to avoid the information, however, use it when it is provided. In Studies 3-5, people decide whether to learn how much money they could earn by accepting an intuitively unappealing bet (that a sympathetic student performs poorly or that a hurricane hits a third-world country). Although intuitively unappealing, the bets are financially rational because they only have financial upside. If people avoid information in part to protect their intuitive preference, then avoidance should be greater when an intuitive preference is especially strong and when information could influence the decision. As predicted, avoidance is driven by the strength of the intuitive preference (Study 3) and, ironically, information avoidance is greater before a decision is made, when the information is decision relevant, than after, when the information is irrelevant for the decision (Studies 4 and 5). (PsycINFO Database Record

Sudden-death aversion: Avoiding superior options because they feel riskier.

We present evidence of sudden-death aversion (SDA)-the tendency to avoid "fast" strategies that provide a greater chance of success, but include the possibility of immediate defeat, in favor of "slow" strategies that reduce the possibility of losing quickly, but have lower odds of ultimate success. Using a combination of archival analyses and controlled experiments, we explore the psychology behind SDA. First, we provide evidence for SDA and its cost to decision makers by tabulating how often NFL teams send games into overtime by kicking an extra point rather than going for the 2-point conversion (Study 1) and how often NBA teams attempt potentially game-tying 2-point shots rather than potentially game-winning 3-pointers (Study 2). To confirm that SDA is not limited to sports, we demonstrate SDA in a military scenario (Study 3). We then explore two mechanisms that contribute to SDA: myopic loss aversion and concerns about "tempting fate." Studies 4 and 5 show that SDA is due, in part, to myopic loss aversion, such that decision makers narrow the decision frame, paying attention to the prospect of immediate loss with the "fast" strategy, but not the downstream consequences of the "slow" strategy. Study 6 finds that people are more pessimistic about a risky strategy that needn't be pursued (opting for sudden death) than the same strategy that must be pursued. We end by discussing how these twin mechanisms lead to differential expectations of blame from the self and others, and how SDA influences decisions in several different walks of life. (PsycINFO Database Record

Mental Simulation of Visceral States Affects Preferences and Behavior.

Preferences and behavior are heavily influenced by one's current visceral experience, yet people often fail to anticipate such effects. Although research suggests that this gap is difficult to overcome-to act as if in another visceral state-research on mental simulation has demonstrated that simulations can substitute for experiences, albeit to a weaker extent. We examine whether mentally simulating visceral states can impact preferences and behavior. We show that simulating a specific visceral state (e.g., being cold or hungry) shifts people's preferences for relevant activities (Studies 1a-2) and choices of food portion sizes (Study 3). Like actual visceral experiences, mental simulation only affects people's current preferences but not their general preferences (Study 4). Finally, people project simulated states onto similar others, as is the case for actual visceral experiences (Study 5). Thus, mental simulation may help people anticipate their own and others' future preferences, thereby improving their decision making.

Enacting rituals to improve self-control.

Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in 6 experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food in a subsequent decision (Experiment 2), and enacting a ritual before a food choice (i.e., without being integrated into the consumption process) promoted the choice of healthy food over unhealthy food (Experiments 3a and 3b). The positive effect of rituals on self-control held even when a set of ritualized gestures were not explicitly labeled as a ritual, and in other domains of behavioral self-control (i.e., prosocial decision-making; Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, Experiments 3a, 3b, 4, and 5 provided evidence for the psychological process underlying the effectiveness of rituals: heightened feelings of self-discipline. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that the absence of a self-control conflict eliminated the effect of rituals on behavior, demonstrating that rituals affect behavioral self-control specifically because they alter responses to self-control conflicts. We conclude by briefly describing the results of a number of additional experiments examining rituals in other self-control domains. Our body of evidence suggests that rituals can have beneficial consequences for self-control. (PsycINFO Database Record

Another look at why people are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets.

People are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, a result that previous investigators have attributed to anticipated regret. The authors suggest that people's subjective likelihood judgments also make them disinclined to switch. Four studies examined likelihood judgments with respect to exchanged and retained lottery tickets and found that (a) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win a lottery than are retained tickets and (b) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win the more aversive it would be if the ticket did win. The authors provide evidence that this effect occurs because the act of imagining an exchanged ticket winning the lottery increases the belief that such an event is likely to occur.

Target and observer differences in the acceptance of questionable apologies.

Do people distinguish between sincere and insincere apologies? Because targets and observers face different constraints, we hypothesized that observers would differentiate between spontaneous and coerced apologies but that targets would not. In Studies 1 and 2 participants either received or observed a spontaneous apology, a coerced apology, or no apology, following a staged offense, and the predicted target-observer difference emerged. Studies 3-5 provided evidence in support of 3 mechanisms that contribute to this target-observer difference. Studies 3 and 4 indicate that this difference is due, in part, to a motivation to be seen positively by others and a motivation to feel good about oneself. Study 5 suggests that social scripts constrain the responses of targets more than those of observers.

One-shot illusory correlations and stereotype formation.

In four studies, the authors explored the emergence of one-shot illusory correlations--in which a single instance of unusual behavior by a member of a rare group is sufficient to create an association between group and behavior. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, unusual behaviors committed by members of rare groups were processed differently than other types of behaviors. They received more processing time, prompted more attributional thinking, and were more memorable. In Study 4, the authors obtained evidence from two implicit measures of association that one-shot illusory correlations are generalized to other members of a rare group. The authors contend that one-shot illusory correlations arise because unusual pairings of behaviors and groups uniquely prompt people to entertain group membership as an explanation of the unusual behavior.

Believing what we do not believe: Acquiescence to superstitious beliefs and other powerful intuitions.

Traditionally, research on superstition and magical thinking has focused on people's cognitive shortcomings, but superstitions are not limited to individuals with mental deficits. Even smart, educated, emotionally stable adults have superstitions that are not rational. Dual process models--such as the corrective model advocated by Kahneman and Frederick (2002, 2005), which suggests that System 1 generates intuitive answers that may or may not be corrected by System 2--are useful for illustrating why superstitious thinking is widespread, why particular beliefs arise, and why they are maintained even though they are not true. However, to understand why superstitious beliefs are maintained even when people know they are not true requires that the model be refined. It must allow for the possibility that people can recognize--in the moment--that their belief does not make sense, but act on it nevertheless. People can detect an error, but choose not to correct it, a process I refer to as acquiescence. The first part of the article will use a dual process model to understand the psychology underlying magical thinking, highlighting features of System 1 that generate magical intuitions and features of the person or situation that prompt System 2 to correct them. The second part of the article will suggest that we can improve the model by decoupling the detection of errors from their correction and recognizing acquiescence as a possible System 2 response. I suggest that refining the theory will prove useful for understanding phenomena outside of the context of magical thinking.

Embodied motivation: using a goal systems framework to understand the preference for social and physical warmth.

Embodiment research has primarily focused on metaphor-assimilative effects (e.g., perceiving someone to be socially warmer when holding a warm object). Research shows these effects can occur by activating metaphor-associated knowledge constructs. This account is not sufficient, however, for explaining complementary effects--for example, the tendency to prefer social warmth when experiencing physical coldness (Experiment 1). We suggest that socially warm events are considered a means for achieving the goal of reducing physical coldness. Guided by this basic hypothesis and the principles of a goal systems framework, we examine whether the basic relationship between goals and means explains complementary embodiment effects. We find that socially warm activities are preferred over control activities when people are primed with the goal of reducing physical coldness, but not when primed with the concept of coldness (Experiment 2). We also find that activating an alternative goal decreases the attractiveness of socially warm activities when people are feeling cold (Experiment 3). Finally, we examine the effect of social coldness on preferences for physical warmth, showing that the attractiveness of physically warm items among socially excluded people is decreased by activating an alternative goal (Experiment 4). These results suggest that complementary embodiment effects follow the principles of goal activation.

If he can do it, so can they: exposure to counterstereotypically successful exemplars prompts automatic inferences.

After incidental exposure to Blacks who succeeded in counterstereotypical domains (e.g., Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison), participants drew an automatic inference that race was not a success-inhibiting factor in modern society. Of note, participants' automatic inferences were not simply guided by their explicit reasoning (i.e., their beliefs about what these exemplars signify about the state of race relations). Studies 1-3 demonstrated the basic automatic inference effect and provided evidence that such effects unfolded automatically, without intention or awareness. Study 4 replicated the effect in non-race-related domains. Subsequent studies examined what features of exemplars (Studies 5 and 6) and inference makers (Studies 7 and 8) prompt automatic inferences. Study 5 suggested that counterstereotypically successful exemplars prompt racism-denying inferences because they signal what is possible, even if not typical. Study 6 demonstrated that when these exemplars succeed in a stereotypical domain (e.g., Blacks in athletics), similar automatic inferences are not drawn. Those most likely to draw automatic inferences are people predisposed to approach the world with inferential thinking: participants dispositionally high in need for cognition (Study 7) or experimentally primed to think inferentially (Study 8).

Reversing one's fortune by pushing away bad luck.

Across cultures, people try to "undo" bad luck with superstitious rituals such as knocking on wood, spitting, or throwing salt. We suggest that these rituals reduce the perceived likelihood of anticipated negative outcomes because they involve avoidant actions that exert force away from one's representation of self, which simulates the experience of pushing away bad luck. Five experiments test this hypothesis by having participants tempt fate and then engage in avoidant actions that are either superstitious (Experiment 1, knocking on wood) or nonsuperstitious (Experiments 2-5, throwing a ball). We find that participants who knock down (away from themselves) or throw a ball think that a jinxed negative outcome is less likely than participants who knock up (toward themselves) or hold a ball. Experiments 3 and 4 provide evidence that after tempting fate, engaging in an avoidant action leads to less clear mental representations for the jinxed event, which, in turn, leads to lower perceived likelihoods. Finally, we demonstrate that engaging in an avoidant action-rather than creating physical distance-is critical for reversing the perceived effect of the jinx. Although superstitions are often culturally defined, the underlying psychological processes that give rise to them may be shared across cultures.

Visceral fit: While in a visceral state, associated states of the world seem more likely.

We propose that visceral states can influence beliefs through "visceral fit": People will judge states of the world associated with their current visceral experience as more likely. We found that warmth influenced belief in global warming (Studies 1-3) and that thirst impacted forecasts of drought and desertification (Study 5). These effects emerged in a naturalistic setting (Study 1) and in experimental lab settings (Studies 2, 3, and 5). Studies 2-6 distinguished between 3 mechanistic accounts: temperature as information (Studies 2 and 3), conceptual accessibility (Studies 4 and 5), and fluency of simulation (Studies 6a and 6b). Studies 2 and 3 ruled out the temperature as information account. Feeling warm enhanced belief in global warming even when temperature was manipulated in an uninformative indoor setting, when participants' attention was first directed to the indoor temperature, and when participants' belief about the current outdoor temperature was statistically controlled. Studies 4 and 5 ruled out conceptual accessibility as the key mediator: Priming the corresponding concepts did not produce analogous effects on judgment. Studies 6a and 6b used a causal chain design and found support for a "simulational fluency" account. Participants experiencing the visceral state of warmth constructed more fluent mental representations of hot (vs. cold) outdoor images, and those who were led to construe the same hot outdoor images more fluently believed more in global warming. Together, the results suggest that visceral states can influence one's beliefs by making matching states of the world easier to simulate and therefore seem more likely.

How choice affects and reflects preferences: revisiting the free-choice paradigm.

After making a choice between 2 objects, people reevaluate their chosen item more positively and their rejected item more negatively (i.e., they spread the alternatives). Since Brehm's (1956) initial free-choice experiment, psychologists have interpreted the spreading of alternatives as evidence for choice-induced attitude change. It is widely assumed to occur because choosing creates cognitive dissonance, which is then reduced through rationalization. In this article, we express concern with this interpretation, noting that the free-choice paradigm (FCP) will produce spreading, even if people's attitudes remain unchanged. Specifically, if people's ratings/rankings are an imperfect measure of their preferences and their choices are at least partially guided by their preferences, then the FCP will measure spreading, even if people's preferences remain perfectly stable. We show this, first by proving a mathematical theorem that identifies a set of conditions under which the FCP will measure spreading, even absent attitude change. We then experimentally demonstrate that these conditions appear to hold and that the FCP measures a spread of alternatives, even when this spreading cannot have been caused by choice. We discuss how the problem we identify applies to the basic FCP paradigm as well as to all variants that examine moderators and mediators of spreading. The results suggest a reassessment of the free-choice paradigm and, perhaps, the conclusions that have been drawn from it.