Ritual Intuitions: Cognitive Contributions to Judgments of Ritual Efficacy

Ritual Syntax and Cognitive Theory

ing from the text, we find the following order of specific actions (n.b.: numbers assigned to actions here do not correspond to numbers assigned to stanzas by Dumont as found in the appended translation):

Bringing Ritual to Mind

Ritual Process

iii Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Bill and Barbara, my brother, Peter, sister-in-law, Sharon, my girlfriend, Sylvia, my cat, Oli, and all the other family and friends that have supported me in the pursuit of my dreams. iv Acknowledgement I am grateful to my thesis committee members, Aaron McNamee, Dan Rule and Kathy Rodriguez for all their help and guidance. I appreciate th...

Prisoners of ritual.

The indelible memories of my medical undergraduate days include one of a lecture delivered by the late Karl Stern, then professor of psychiatry at McGill. His topic was the role of ritual in preventing anxiety. He began by asking us to recall the silly games we had played as children — avoiding cracks in the sidewalk (“step on a crack, break your mother’s back”) or holding your breath when you ...

Priming randomness increases the evaluation of ritual efficacy

Reestablishing feelings of control in the face of uncertainty is a fundamental motive for human behavior. We propose that rituals (i.e., socially stipulated, causally opaque practices) provide a means for coping with the aversive feelings associated with randomness due to the perception of a connection between ritual action and a desired outcome. Two experiments were conducted (one in Brazil [N...