Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection

Model of Ritualized Behavior

PIERRE LI ´ENARDPASCAL BOYER

Why do people all over the world engage in ritual practices?◦ the article seeks to attempt to begin to answer that

question.◦ Rituals are compelling because our cognitive

architecture make these behaviors “attention-grabbing, intuitively-appropriate, and compelling” Furthermore, the authors posit that specific parts of

ritualistic behaviors activate cognitive-emotional systems concerned with the detection of danger, also known as a hazard-precaution system, which responds to cues in the environment and render certain behaviors intuitively appropriate. this system can activate without the presence of danger,

especially during rituals If ritualistic actions activate this system, then the actions

will become attention-grabbing and compelling.

The Question:

The problem with answering the question “why do humans have rituals?” is difficult to answer because rituals have never been perfectly defined with behaviorally precise criteria. ◦ there are types of “rituals” which share major features

with another type, but do not share any major features with a third type. And yet all are identified as “rituals.”

◦ For this reason, the article focuses on ritualized behavior, defined by 4 necessary factors: 1. Compulsion-one must perform the particular sequence of

behaviors. 2. Rigidity-The sequence must be performed a particular

way. 3. Redundancy-The same actions are repeated inside the

ritual. 4. Goal Demotion-The actions are divorced from their usual

goals.

What are rituals?

Humans have these collective ritualized behaviors because they are selected through cultural transmission as more natural than other possible sequences or actions. In certain circumstances, the ritualized actions performed seemed more appropriate and memorable.

These behaviors have some psychological effect of performers that causes them to perform the behaviors. ◦ It’s not just cultural obligations.◦ What cognitive systems are activated by ritual

performances?

Why do humans find ritualized behavior so compelling and attention-grabbing?

Here, obvious means obvious to anthropologists (frequent features that a decent model should explain)

No obvious empirical goals: “meaningless” acts: In ritualized behavior, people do things repeatedly, bolstering the idea that the actions are disconnected from their usual goals. While the entire ritual has a stated purpose, the sequence of actions that “compose the ritual are not connected to this goal in the same way as subactions connect to subgoals in ordinary behavior.” (participants don’t perform individual actions in order to make individual goals appear). There is generally no conclusive explanation for the reasoning behind subactions of a ritual.

Literalism and rigidity: Ritualized behaviors are performed in an exact way as it was prescribed, usually as it was done before. People strive to create a ritual performance that “matches their representation of past performances, and that they attach great emotional weight to any deviation from that remembered pattern.”

“Obvious” Features of Ritualized Behavior

Repetition, reiteration, redundancy: repeated actions of the same gesture or action are typical in ritualized behavior. The action repeated and the number of times should always be identical. The repetition is seen as intrinsically efficacious.

Order and boundaries: Compared to the unpredictable patterns of behavior exhibited in normal life, the pattern of behaviors inside rituals are highly ordered. There is usually a special space where prohibitions might exist (only men can sit inside it, e.g.).

Specific concerns: There are usually concerns over cleansing and pollution. Water and fire might be used as a form of cleaning away some kind of pollution. Often, the whole point of a ritual might be to purify people of objects.

“Obvious” Features of Ritualized Behavior, cont’d

So far, anthropological theories cannot account for why rituals necessarily include features of rigid sequences or repeated actions or any of the other obvious features.◦ Some have argued that rituals are symbolic, but there

does not seem to be any special information or meaning being passed to participants of rituals. The normal features of rituals (repetition, redundancy, pointless actions) would only obscure any message trying to be transferred.

The following are the few theoretical frameworks that have tried to address why rituals contain such specific ritualized behavior.

Background to Ritualization

There are clearly similarities between human rituals and animal routines and displays.◦ However, the preoccupation with unseen dangers and

concerns over cleansing are definitely human-specific. These similarities mainly include simplification of

communication. These “displays and rituals make transmission of simpler messages more efficient.”◦ In the animal kingdom, ritualized fights save the fitness

costs of actual fights. ◦ Still, while animal displays exist for these reasons,

human collective rituals cannot be explained so easily. Further, we cannot determine an evolutionary

account for ritualized behavior. It remains to be seen what adaptive value rigidity of group action has.

Phylogeny of Ritual

This model suggests that rituals create group cohesion through coordination between agents.◦ however, many social activities require coordination

between agents without ritualized behavior. but ritualized behavior demonstrates commitment,

agreement of actions, and collaboration. So it is not just cohesion, but public commitment to

cohesion, which paves the way for other displays of commitment in the group.

More evidence of this is found in the overall expense of many rituals—in either resources or general fitness (for example, boys might need to undergo dangerous and painful activities to become a man).

these costs point to a type of commitment that cannot be faked.

Adaptationist Models: Group Cohesion and Signaling

While these theories are interesting, they still do not explain why ritualized behaviors are attention-demanding and compelling.

for this reason, the authors turn to ritualized behaviors that are not cultural or collective are done for different reasons:◦ Children’s rituals: Children engage in ritualistic behaviors between 2

and 7. The themes are consistently about perfectionism, attachment to objects, concerns over cleanliness, precise ordering of objects, and preferred routines. Any deviation to a child’s ritual is intuitively seen as dangerous.

◦ Obsessive-compulsive disorder: people with OCD generally perform ritualized actions over and over in precise ways, usually as an intuitive response to obsessive thoughts about potential dangers (germs, for example).

◦ Life-stage-relevant intrusive thoughts: Often, people without OCD diagnoses will have intrusive thoughts about danger and appropriate courses of actions, depending on what stage of life they’re in. This is common in parents of newborns, who experience constant worry over the welfare of the child as well as uncertainty as to whether one will be responsible for harm to the infant. These fears lead to ritualized behaviors similar to OCD (checking and rechecking, in particular).

Ritualized Proper, Individual and Collective: Diverse Domains of Ritualization

Freud found a connection between the previous private rituals and collective rituals in religion by stating that both are forms of neurotic obsession. However, this still does not solve the problem of why ritualized behaviors exist in either context.◦ Fiske found that the same themes recur over and over in both

domains (private and collective rituals). While OCD concerns over lucky or unlucky numbers, repeated actions, symmetry, and cleanliness are considered irrational, while the same concerns are socially-acceptable in collective rituals.

◦ To Fiske, the human need for ritualized action, usually pointed towards social contexts, is hyperactive in pathology. He believes that collective rituals “channel personal fears or doubts

into culturally transmitted conceptual schemes, thereby making them shared and probably less” anxiety-provoking. Probably because rituals make the world seem simpler, more

predictable, and more meaningful. Still, the individual capacities involved in rituals (scripted actions,

security-related issues, etc.) can be found in other contexts. Rituals combine all these rituals in a specific process…but why?

The Fiske Hypothesis

Humans and other mammals have specific systems in our brains for dealing with potential danger, the hazard-precaution system. As humans, we need to be on the lookout for indirect cues of potential threats to reproductive success. This system seems focused on predation, intrusion by strangers, contamination, contagion, social offense, and harm to offspring (evolutionary threats).◦ Individual intrusive thoughts and rituals are often targeted

towards these evolutionary threats.◦ Neurocogntive models would consider OCD a form of

hyperactivation of this system.◦ In the author’s model, normal activation of this system

would explain compelling precautionary behaviors in many situations (including life-cycle-stage and children’s rituals).

A NEUROCOGNITIVE MODEL OF INDIVIDUAL RITUALIZED BEHAVIOR: Potential danger and Relevant cognitive Systems

The complex rules and rigid performance of rituals (do X, but not Y) turn what was once a routinized and automatic behavior (such as walking) into tightly controlled action that requires sustained attention.◦ This sustained action “swamps” the participant’s

working memory, which prevents him for attending to stimuli and situations outside the ritualized action.

◦ It has also been stated that such cognitively-demanding activities push out unwanted thoughts for a little while.

Complex Ritual Rules and Working Memory

The premise the authors start with is that particular collective rituals are selected for, becoming culturally successful because people remember them and find them compelling enough to repeat them.

They do so because they activate specific individual neurocognitive systems in the brain more than other behaviors.

A Model of Collective Rituals

The hazard-precaution system is activated only by information about potential danger (and only a few specific dangers) because of certain indirect cues in the environment.◦ While only certain inputs activate this system, it is still

vulnerable to “cognitive capture,” or activation by signals that are not meant to be part of its activation repertoire. For example, a nonpoisonous butterfly may evolve the same bright colors as a poisonous butterfly, so that the colors will activate fear in potential predators…even though they should not fear a non-poisonous butterfly.

◦ The contention of the authors is that many aspects of collective rituals contain cues for potential danger, thereby activating the hazard-precaution system.

Cognitive Capture of the Hazard-Precaution System

It would seem that most people who participate in rituals do not have much information about it. They probably would not be able to justify most of the ritualized behaviors they perform.◦ However, it’s unlikely they perform these behaviors on pure

social imitation alone.◦ People convey information triggers nonrandom inferences

about the behavior they’re performing. The information manifested consists of the following elements: Available information about the background situation:

participants are told that a ritual should be performed, because nonperformance is dangerous. They are given info about the potential danger the rituals ward off, and these dangers overlap with the repertoire of the hazard-precaution system.

Available information about required course of action: People are given a precise script of actions to perform. The action descriptions involve themes that are related to the output of the hazard-precaution system (cleansing, washing, checking).

Information Available and Likely Inferences

What features of collective rituals cause cognitive capture and activate the hazard-precaution system?◦ Occasion for the ritual: Often, the stated purpose of a ritual is

to prevent or ward off some kind of unseen danger, one that overlaps with the potential hazard repertoire. This manifests in either preventing plague, famine, disease, witchcraft, or spiritual pollution.

◦ Danger of nonperformance: People intuitively feel it would be very wrong or dangerous to not participate in a ritual, even if the risk is not clearly specified.

◦ Detailed Prescriptions: As stated earlier, motifs such as washing and cleaning, checking and rechecking, and creating order are related to security.

The authors posit that all these features of communicated information result in weakened activation of the hazard-precaution system. It is weaker because the danger is only told to the participant through others, as opposed to seeing evidence himself.

Recurrent Features of Collective Rituals and Cognitive Capture

Activation of hazard-precaution systems may explain other facets of collective rituals:◦ Forcing goal demotion: Repetition removes goal

ascription from the equation. Other behaviors make goal ascription impossible (washing hands without water). These “tricks” result in goal demotion. Attention is focused on low-level, fine-grained description of action, so that sequences of actions can occur without attributing goals to each behavioral activity.

◦ Swamping of working memory: The actions performed require full focus and attention. A person who has to circle a flagpole, while never looking down has to perform 2 functions at once. He does one thing and refrains from doing another. This positive and negative prescription makes it difficult to rely on automatic routines.

Consequences: Action Representation in Collective Rituals

A question remains: why are collective rituals so organized? What processes caused them to be so effective in creating personal motivations?◦ to clarify, the authors are not implying that these

ritualized behaviors triggers full activation of the hazard-precaution system. The authors believe that those activities with the

aforementioned prescriptions and motifs will activate this system more than those that don’t. Also, this difference ensures the cultural prevalence of this kind of ceremony.

Also, the people’s insistence on the potential danger of not participating fully manifests as moral threat, threat of social exclusion, or worry about misfortune—all likely to active this system.

COLLECTIVE RITUALS IN CULTURAL TRANSMISSION, Transmission: Relevance and Selection

In this model, ritualized behavior is considered the opposite of routinized behavior.◦ But in most human ceremonies, there is a

combination of ritualized actions (high control, attention focus) and routinized actions (automaticity, low attention focus). The difference is in the attentional focus and

division of the action flow Note that the same ritual might involve

ritualized action for a novice but routinized action for a seasoned expert.

Implications: Ritualization as the Opposite of Routinization

Is there a specific human capacity and adaptation for ritualized behavior?◦ It’s found in all human groups (including the earliest

humans and Neanderthals); it’s different from animals’ displays which makes it seem like a human adaptation; and it’s connected to security motivation, concerns that intrusive and anxious thoughts focus on, as well as the restricted range of compulsive responses

◦ However, to be evolved through natural selection, rituals would need to promote reproductive potential. While these rituals may reduce unmanageable anxiety by

coordinating actions with others, thereby making them more meaningful, there is no evidence that this promotes reproductive success

Generally, anxiety is adaptive and functional.

COLLECTIVE RITUALS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION: Adaptation or Recruitment of Other Adaptations?

The ritual behaviors are probably not evolved behaviors from an ancestral past.◦More likely, the rituals combine single

behaviors (avoiding contact with certain items, checking the environment for possible traces of intrusion, washing) that are appropriate given evolutionary hazards.

◦The ritualistic process accumulates and distorts originally appropriate actions.

Atavistic Procedures or Evolved Precautions?

If rituals can activate the hazard-precaution system and make the rituals attention-demanding and compelling, this would make ritual a by-product of evolved cognitive architecture.

Rituals can be considered highly successful cultural “gadgets” whose recurrence in cultural evolution is function of: ◦ 1. how easily they are comprehended by witnesses and◦ 2. how deeply they trigger activation of motivation

systems and cognitive processes that are present in humans for other evolutionary reasons.

Many human cultural creations (literature, music, or visual arts) can be considered by-products of a species-specific human cognitive architecture and indirect consequence of evolution, as well.

Capacity or Disposition?

The survivors said they prayed the rosary, which is composed of several repeated verbal prayers, none of which has a specific purpose.◦ However, the act of focusing on praying in a specific

manner and direction and repeating it may have swamped the survivors’ working memory, making it difficult for them to feel the anxiety of their situation and surroundings.

◦ Also, this act of praying to heaven gave meaning to their world, allowing them to better deal with it. They would activate their hazard-precaution system in a small way and then succesfully deal with it.

Relation to Andes Survivors