The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework

Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psychology of ritual, the current paper provides an organizing framework to understand recent empirical work from social psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience. Our framework focuses on three primary regulatory functions of rituals: regulation of (1) emotions, (2) performance goal states, and (3) social connection. We examine the possible mechanisms underlying each function by considering the bottom-up processes that emerge from the physical features of rituals and top-down processes that emerge from the psychological meaning of rituals. Our framework, by appreciating the value of psychological theory, generates novel predictions and enriches our understanding of ritual and human behavior more broadly.

传统上，仪式的研究多从广阔的社会文化视角出发，对其中所蕴含的心理过程关注甚少。然而，近年来，心理学家开始将他们的注意力转向仪式的研究，揭示了驱动人类行为这一普遍特征的因果机制。随着对仪式心理学的兴趣日益增长，本文提供了一种组织框架，以理解来自社会心理学、认知科学、人类学、行为经济学和神经科学领域的近期实证研究。我们的框架聚焦于仪式的三个主要调节功能：（1）情绪调节，（2）绩效目标状态调节，以及（3）社会连接调节。我们通过考虑仪式物理特征产生的自下而上的过程和心理意义产生的自上而下的过程，来探讨每个功能的潜在机制。我们的框架通过欣赏心理学理论的价值，产生了新颖的预测，并丰富了我们对仪式及人类行为更广泛的理解。