Rituals Enhance Consumption

Rituals enhance consumption.

Four experiments tested the novel hypothesis that ritualistic behavior potentiates and enhances ensuing consumption--an effect found for chocolates, lemonade, and even carrots. Experiment 1 showed that participants who engaged in ritualized behavior, compared with those who did not, evaluated chocolate as more flavorful, valuable, and deserving of behavioral savoring. Experiment 2 demonstrated ...

Extreme rituals enhance social cohesion

How Rituals Might Aid the Enjoyment of Consumption

Four experiments tested the novel hypothesis that ritualistic behavior potentiates and enhances ensuing consumption— an effect found for chocolates, lemonade, and even carrots. Experiment 1 showed that participants who engaged in ritualized behavior, compared with those who did not, evaluated chocolate as more flavorful, valuable, and deserving of behavioral savoring. Experiment 2 demonstrated ...

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.,...

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...