Article archive / July 1, 2016
Originally published: . Volume 7, No. 7. Source pages: 1, 10, 11.
Flying the flag for the 4th? Inviting friends and family to a backyard barbeque? Shooting off some fireworks?
When we dance at a wedding, blow out candles on a birthday cake, or attend a funeral we are participating in the complex, psychological fabric of social rituals. If we recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of a meeting, or sing the national anthem before an LSU football game, or drink a toast to a friend’s promotion, we are transmitting social norms, group identity, and our intentions.
The pervasive evolutionary and psychological meaning of group rituals can range from the conscious and obvious to the subtle to the non-conscious. Citing work by Louisiana’s Dr. Matt Rossano, authors of a recent article say that group ritual has been understudied. Watson-Jones and Legare, who recently authored, “The Social Functions of Group Rituals,” have started some buzz in science news.
Watson-Jones refers to work by Dr. Rossano, Professor and past Chair of the Department of Psychology at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, when they say that the “complexity and diversity of ritual” have made rituals difficult to fully understand.
The article they cite is Rossano’s, “The essential role of ritual in the transmission and reinforcement of social norms,” published in Psychological Bulletin in 2012. He writes that ritual and ritualized behavior is essential to the transmission and reinforcement of social norms, and that these norms are morally significant for cooperation and social organization.
“The anthropologist Roy Rappaport argued that rituals– or more accurately, ritualized behaviors–serve an indexical function for humans,” Dr. Rossano explained in a recent interview. “That is, they signal a state of mind that the ritual participant is in. So a couple going through a wedding ceremony is signally to each other and to the gathered witnesses that they are ‘in love,’ and ‘want to commit’ to each other,” he said.
“Maori warriors doing a Haka dance are signaling something very different, they are in a ‘fighting’ state of mind,” said Rossano. “This is an extension of what we see in animal rituals. A dog doing the ‘play bow’ is in a playful state of mind and wants his/her play partner to realize that so that their encounter does not descend into a real fight. A chimpanzee doing the ‘begging gesture’ is in submissive state of mind and wants to gain sympathy or help.”
Dr. Rossano, expert in evolutionary psychology, and author of Evolutionary Psychology: The Science of Human Behavior and Evolution, and also Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, looks at rituals through this perspective.
“So what has happened,” Rossano said, “is that certain gestures have evolved into species-specific displays that effectively communicate a state of mind and intentions associated with that state of mind. This makes communication more effective and helps to regulate social encounters so that the risk and potential danger of those encounters can be minimized––as in the dog- play bow example.
“People who ‘ritual’ together emotionally bond together,” Rossano said. “There have been a number of studies over the past decade or so that have taken complete strangers and had them engage in group synchronized ritual-like behaviors––singing, dancing, marching together. Folks who do that later show greater mutual cooperation and trust compared to those who do not move together in synchrony or who do not move together at all,” he said. “People who move together have also been found to–– believe they–– share more values in common and are more similar to each other in personality traits and they empathize more with each other.”
“This helps to explain a number of common observations such as why do soldiers still march together–– nobody marches into battle anymore, so there is no practical military reason to do so. But there is an important social bonding reason for it.” Dr. Rossano explained that it is almost impossible to find a traditional society that does not dance, sign, or chant together, on a fairly regular basis. Why? Because of social bonding.“Rituals bond people together, especially those rituals that involve group synchronization,” said Rossano. Physiological studies show that when people dance and sing together their autonomic functions become synchronized and this very likely is part of the mechanism for emotional bonding.
What are some of the applications for using rituals? “There’s lots of evidence that ritual activity in the form of meditation and prayer has a host of positive mental and emotional effects,” said Rossano. “Of course, ritual has a long history as a coping mechanism – funerary rituals, rituals of remembrance and healing have been used for nearly as long as people have had to deal with these issues.”
Dr. Judith G. Miranti, licensed marriage and family therapist and a Professor of counselor education at Xavier University of Louisiana, also sees this aspect of social rituals. She is Co-Clinical Director of the Graduate Counseling Program at Xavier and has served as the President of the National Association for Spirituality, Ethics, and Religious Values in Counseling.
“As a licensed marriage and family therapist working with couples and families,” said Dr. Miranti, “I have found that rituals are important reminders of the connection which they share. Couples and families create them together to symbolize their love and they help build their family identity and solidarity. It also provides a sense of security that couples and families have with each other.”
“Even simple rituals such sharing your day’s activities at an evening meal together can be extremely effective,” Miranti said. “Rituals performed after experiencing losses, such as death, help to alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like public speaking or playing for a championship, can help to reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence.
“Some may call these rituals being scrupulous, however they provide meaning and purpose in an individual’s life,” she explained.
“I remember working with a blending family and having them build a mobile together with pieces and parts that described each individual’s identity and assembling the mobile until balance was achieved. The mobile was hung in a prominent place to remind the family that every member was important to achieve balance. This proved to be a powerful activity and a daily reminder of the developing identity of this family,” DR. Miranti said.
“I have also seen families in transition, such as those about to experience the empty nest, talk about placing symbols in the empty nest to remind the family that although separated, they still held the same bonds.”
What connections to larger group norms and values, does Dr. Miranti see? “One of the main purposes of rituals, whether religious or secular, is to impart and reinforce values,” she said. “Nationalism is fostered through a country’s traditions and rituals such as celebrating Thanksgiving or the concert on the mall in Washington, D.C.”
“The same goes with family traditions,” she said. “Through daily family prayer and nightly bedtime stories, the family’s values regarding education, reading, and life-long learning is inculcated; and through regular family dinners or activities, familial solidarity is instilled.”
“There is also a time to let go of rituals when they no longer serve a purpose or if they have become burdensome,” she explained.
Rituals are also part of subgroup identity, for increasing cohesion and communication for who is and who isn’t in a group, Dr. Rossano explained. “Rituals that are shared exclusively by group members can serve as identifiers for other group members. So if I see someone stop their car by the side of the road, get out a prayer rug, face deliberately in a particular direction and begin a very clear set of prayerful activities (palms up, bowing, prostrating, etc.), I can be pretty sure that he is a Muslim and if I’m one too already we have a shared connection though a set of common beliefs and behaviors.”
The psychology of rituals seems to be drawing interest in the science news lately, could this perhaps be due to a heightened awareness of the issues of subgroups and diversity? “Increased diversity means that we are more regularly interacting with people who are very different from us. This is very strange, historically,” said Dr. Rossano.
“In the past, tribes, villages, regions, even entire countries very often had a set of beliefs, rituals, and customs that where widely shared by all or nearly all. Today we are far more likely to be among people with whom we do not share a deep history or a common set of beliefs and rituals. In this context, ‘ritual marking’ becomes even more important as a means of finding similar ‘others.’”
“In the past we could assume that someone local was like ourselves,” he said. “Today we can’t. So if we are interested in finding similar others, we need clear signs of what those others believe, what their values are, and whether we can regard them as reliable, trustworthy or not. Ritual signals can serve that purpose of identifying reliable others, but in a very diverse, ‘noisy’ environment the signal must be loud and clear.”
Has Dr. Rossano noticed any changes in our society and its rituals? “Rituals can be costly in time, energy, and resources. Increasingly, people are unwilling to pay those costs because the perceived benefits are harder to recognize,” he said.
“My sense is that ritual has become increasingly marginalized and more shallow for many people, which leads to it becoming more concentrated and intensified amongst a smaller proportion of people.”
“The lack of widespread ritual participation and increasing ritual diversity and intensity, I think, contributes to a general fragmentation and ‘individualization’ of society. We have less and less that we share in common across the board so we either drop out of community ritual activity entirely or we cling tighter and tighter to a more purified, intensified form of ritual in smaller more localized communities.”
“Ritual has long been our means of social bonding, healing, memorializing, coping and transitioning. We abandon it at our own peril,” Dr. Rossano said.
Dr. Matt Rossano has published on the popular topic of social rituals and group norms. He is an author, Professor, and the previous Chair of Psychology at Southeastern Louisiana University. (Courtesy photo.) Special care is taken in folding the flag after Memorial Day ceremony at the Task Force Leatherneck headquarters, May 28, 2012. Photo by Master Sgt. Grady Fontana of 1st Marine Division.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.