Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional cultures are easily ported to computer games. However, I contend that the meaning behind worlds, rituals...

Drawing upon James Carey’s ritual model of communication as a framework, we argue that rituals, especially religious rituals, are important resources for technology design. We suggest that a ritual view of ICT interaction represents an alternative and significant model for ICT development and evaluation, and that the observance of religious rituals affords researchers the opportunity to see cul...

Bringing Ritual toMind explores the cognitive and psychological foundations of religious ritual systems. Participants must recall their rituals well enough to ensure a sense of continuity across performances, and those rituals must motivate them to transmit and re-perform them. Most religious rituals the world over exploit either high performance frequency or extraordinary emotional stimulation...

This study examined the relation between marital satisfaction and religious holiday ritual practices. One hundred twenty couples, married 9 years on average, completed measures of religious holiday practices (current family and family-of-origin) and marital satisfaction. Couples were interviewed about how important religion was to their family life. Marital satisfaction was related to religious...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether in addition to repetitiveness, the motor rituals of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) involve reduced functionality due to numerous and measurable acts that are irrelevant and unnecessary for task completion. METHOD Comparing motor rituals of OCD patients with behavior of non-patient control individuals who were instructed to perform the same mot...

OBJECTIVE To examine how one aspect of family life, notably family rituals and routines, may protect children with asthma from anxiety-related symptoms. METHODS Eighty-six families (43 children with asthma, 43 healthy comparison children) participated in the study. Children completed measures of anxiety (Revised Child Manifest Anxiety Scale) and health. Parents completed measures of stress (P...

In the absence of immortality, the human species has over the millennia developed rites and rituals to help in the passing of life to honor the person who is dying or has died or in some way demonstrate their "courage" and perseverance as well as duty even in the face of almost certain death. The centuries-old traditions of the gathering of loved ones, the chanting of prayers, the ritual religi...

I. Introduction Without systems of public, external symbols for recording information, nonliterate communities have to rely on human memory for the retention and transmission of cultural knowledge. Religious expressions either evolved in directions that rendered them memorable or they were-quite literally-forgotten. Most religious systems, including all of the great world religions, emerged amo...

Beliefs and customs surrounding death, funeral rites, and mourning provide a window into a society’s most deeply held values. In the monotheistic faith of Islam, eschatology – belief in the Day of Judgment (Yawm al-din) and resurrection (al-qiyama) – underlies many practices. Public mourning rituals that commemorate the deaths of saints and martyrs are closely linked to the concept of salvation...