From Habits to Rituals: Rituals as Social Habits

Habits, rituals, and the evaluative brain.

Scientists in many different fields have been attracted to the study of habits because of the power habits have over behavior and because they invoke a dichotomy between the conscious, voluntary control over behavior, considered the essence of higher-order deliberative behavioral control, and lower-order behavioral control that is scarcely available to consciousness. A broad spectrum of behavio...

Extreme rituals enhance social cohesion

Reproductive rituals

TEIZO OGAWA (editor), History of obstetrics (Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine-East and West), Tokyo, Division of Medical History, Taniguchi Foundation, 1984, 8vo, pp. viii, 283, illus., [no price stated]. ANN OAKLEY, The captured womb. A history of the medical care of pregnant women, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, 8vo, pp. x, 351, illus.,...

Social rituals and onset of mental disorders

The concept of a prodrome, or the very earliest signs of the onset of a mental disorder, is well known in clinical psychiatry, and refers to disturbances of ordinary behaviour that may precede the behaviour and experiences that constitute recognised psychiatric symptoms and signs. In the literature, however, prodromes are described simply by means of lists of behaviours, such as avoidance of me...

Anonymous Rituals

Religion and ritual have been characterized as costly ways for conditional cooperators to signal their type, and thus identify and interact with one another. But an effective signal may be prohibitively expensive: if the cost of participation is too small, freeriders may send the signal and behave selfishly later. However, if the ritual reveals only the average level of signaling in a group, fr...