Social rituals and mental health: evaluation of the Social Rituals Interview Schedule

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...

Extreme rituals enhance social cohesion

Rituals or Good Works: Social Signalling in Religious Organizations

We develop a model of social signalling of religiosity and cooperative behaviour in religious organizations. The model embeds a ritual-based religious organization in which signalling arises through the use of costly rituals, and a discipline-based religious organization in which such signalling occurs through the monitoring of past behaviour. We use this framework to contrast -positively and n...

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...