Rituals enhance consumption.

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 ...

Extreme rituals enhance social cohesion

Food Porn and the Invitation to Gaze: Ephemeral Consumption and the Digital Spectacle

In the digital world, notions of intimacy, communion and sharing are increasingly enacted through new media technologies and social practices which emerge around them. These technologies with the ability to upload, download and disseminate content to select audiences or to a wider public provide opportunities for the creation of new forms of rituals which authenticate and diarise everyday exper...

Bringing Ritual to Mind Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms

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...

Designing Products for Everyday Rituals

The user’s experience of his or her interaction with a product is becoming an increasingly important aspect of product design. In the ‘experience economy’, experiential factors have become major discriminants affecting the success of new products. Industry is well aware of this, and likewise design schools are adjusting their curricula to better train their students to take into account factors...