The Social Consequences of Ritual
Victoria URF with Ron Fischer (AI) and help from Dimitris Xygalatas, Paul Redish, Panos Mitkidis, Rohan Callander, and others...

Collective rituals are social practices that occur outside the boundaries of ordinary economic and educational life. On the face of it, collective rituals do not appear to offer material benefits. It has long been conjectured, however, that rituals offer subtle social benefits by fostering collective solidarity and trust. While informal observations support the solidarity hypothesis, evidence has largely remained circumstantial. Our group was the first to quantify levels of enhancement to solidarity and cooperation in naturally occurring rituals. Our present research is examining specific psychological and cultural mechanisms by which rituals intensify social bonding and amplify charity.

1.              R. Fischer, R. Callander, P. Reddish, & J. Bulbulia (in press) A field investigation of the effects of sacred values and synchronous movements in nine naturally occurring rituals. Human Nature.

2.              Xygalatas, D., Konvalinka, I., Roepstoff, A., & Bulbulia, J. (2011) Quantifying collective effervescence heart-rate dynamics at a fire-walking ritual. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 4(6):735–738. doi: 10.4161/cib.4.6.17609.  Open Access: Here

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