Dimitrios Xygalatas

Extreme Rituals Promote Prosociality

Extreme rituals entail excessive costs without apparent benefits, which raises an evolutionary cost problem (Irons, 2001). It is argued that such intense rituals enhance social cohesion and promote cooperative behaviors (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Durkheim, 1912). However, direct evidence for the relation between ritual intensity and prosociality is lacking. Using economic measures of generosity and contextually relevant indicators of group identity in a real-world setting, we evaluated pro- social effects from naturally occurring rituals that varied in severity.

Effects of religious setting on cooperative behavior: a case study from Mauritius

Abstract Social scientists and folk wisdom have both claimed that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behavior, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality; however, this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviors. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviors, and these effects are evident irrespective of the degree of religiosity of the participant. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report on the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

Effects of Anxiety on Spontaneous Ritualized Behavior

Environmental uncertainty and uncontrollability cause psycho-physiological distress to organisms, often impeding normal functioning. A common response involves ritualization, that is, the limitation of behavioral expressions to predictable stereotypic and repetitive motor patterns. In humans, such behaviors are also symptomatic of psychopathologies like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Although these reactions might be mediated by different neural pathways, they serve to regain a sense of control over an uncertain situation by engaging in behavioral patterns characterized by redundancy (superfluous actions that exceed the functional requirements of a goal), repetitiveness (recurrent behaviors or utterances), and rigidity (emphasis on fidelity and invariance). We examined whether ritualized behavior will manifest spontaneously as a dominant behavioral strategy in anxiogenic situations. Manipulating anxiety, we used motion-capture technology to quantify various characteristics of hand movements. We found that induced anxiety led to an increase in repetitiveness and rigidity, but not redundancy. However, examination of both psychological and physiological pathways revealed that repetitiveness and rigidity were predicted by an increase in heart rate, while self-perceived anxiety was a marginally significant predictor of redundancy. We suggest that these findings are in accordance with an entropy model of uncertainty, in which anxiety motivates organisms to return to familiar low-entropy states in order to regain a sense of control. Our results might inform a better understanding of ritual behavior and psychiatric disorders whose symptoms include over-ritualization.

Lost in the rhythm:effects of rhythm on subsequent interpersonal coordination

Music is a natural human expression present in all cultures, but the functions it serves are still debated. Previous research indicates that rhythm, an essential feature of music, can enhance coordination of movement and increase social bonding. However, the prolonged effects of rhythm have not yet been investigated. In this study, pairs of participants were exposed to one of three kinds of auditory stimuli (rhythmic, arrhythmic, or white-noise) and subsequently engaged in five trials of a joint-action task demanding interpersonal coordination. We show that when compared with the other two stimuli, exposure to the rhythmic beat reduced the practice effect in task performance. Analysis of the behavioral data suggests that this reduction results from more temporally coupled motor movements over successive trials and that shared exposure to rhythm facilitates interpersonal motor coupling, which in this context serves to impede the attainment of necessary dynamic coordination. We propose that rhythm has the potential to enhance interpersonal motor coupling, which might serve as a mechanism behind its facilitation of positive social attitudes.

Extreme Rituals as Social Technologies

We often think of pain as intrinsically bad, and the avoidance of pain is a fundamental evolutionary drive of all species. How can we then explain widespread cultural practices like certain rituals that involve the voluntary infliction of physical pain? In this paper, we argue that inflicting and experiencing pain in a ritual setting may serve important psychological and social functions. By providing psychological relief and leading to stronger identification with the group, such practices may result in a positive feedback loop, which serves both to increase the social cohesion of the community and the continuation of the ritual practices themselves. We argue that although the selective advantage of participation lies at the individual level, the benefits of those practices de facto extend to the group level, thereby allowing extreme rituals to function as effective social technologies.

Memory for Expectation-Violating Concepts: The Effects of Agents and Cultural Familiarity

Previous research has shown that ideas which violate our expectations, such as schema-inconsistent concepts, enjoy privileged status in terms of memorability. In our study, memory for concepts that violate cultural (cultural schema-level) expectations (e.g., “illiterate teacher”, “wooden bottle”, or “thorny grass”) versus domain-level (ontological) expectations (e.g., “speaking cat”, “jumping maple”, or “melting teacher”) was examined. Concepts that violate cultural expectations, or counter-schematic, were remembered to a greater extent compared with concepts that violate ontological expectations and with intuitive concepts (e.g., “galloping pony”, “drying orchid”, or “convertible car”), in both immediate recall, and delayed recognition tests. Importantly, concepts related to agents showed a memory advantage over concepts not pertaining to agents, but this was true only for expectation-violating concepts. Our results imply that intuitive, everyday concepts are equally attractive and memorable regardless of the presence or absence of agents. However, concepts that violate our expectations (cultural-schema or domain-level) are more memorable when pertaining to agents (humans and animals) than to non-agents (plants or objects/artifacts). We conclude that due to their evolutionary salience, cultural ideas which combine expectancy violations and the involvement of an agent are especially memorable and thus have an enhanced probability of being successfully propagated.

It Depends Who Is Watching You: 3-D Agent Cues Increase Fairness.

Laboratory and field studies have demonstrated that exposure to cues of intentional agents in the form of eyes can increase prosocial behavior. However, previous research mostly used 2-dimensional depictions as experimental stimuli. Thus far no study has examined the influence of the spatial properties of agency cues on this prosocial effect. To investigate the role of dimensionality of agency cues on fairness, 345 participants engaged in a decision-making task in a naturalistic setting. The experimental treatment included a 3-dimensional pseudo-realistic model of a human head and a 2-dimensional picture of the same object. The control stimuli consisted of a real plant and its 2-D image. Our results partly support the findings of previous studies that cues of intentional agents increase prosocial behavior. However, this effect was only found for the 3-D cues, suggesting that dimensionality is a critical variable in triggering these effects in a real-world settings. Our research sheds light on a hitherto unexplored aspect of the effects of environmental cues and their morphological properties on decision-making.

Sync to link: Endorphin-mediated synchrony effects on cooperation

Behavioural synchronization has been shown to facilitate social bonding and cooperation but the mechanisms through which such effects are attained are poorly understood. In the current study, participants interacted with a pre-recorded confederate who exhibited different rates of synchrony, and we investigated three mechanisms for the effects of synchrony on likeability and trusting behaviour: self-other overlap, perceived cooperation, and opioid system activation measured via pain threshold. We show that engaging in highly synchronous behaviour activates all three mechanisms, and that these mechanisms mediate the effects of synchrony on liking and investment in a Trust Game. Specifically, self-other overlap and perceived cooperation mediated the effects of synchrony on interpersonal liking, while behavioural trust was mediated only by change in pain threshold. These results suggest that there are multiple compatible pathways through which synchrony influences social attitudes, but endogenous opioid system activation, such as β-endorphin release, might be important in facilitating economic cooperation.

Music As a Sacred Cue? Effects of Religious Music on Moral Behavior

Religion can have an important influence in moral decision-making, and religious reminders may deter people from unethical behavior. Previous research indicated that religious contexts may increase prosocial behavior and reduce cheating. However, the perceptual-behavioral link between religious contexts and decision-making lacks thorough scientific understanding. This study adds to the current literature by testing the effects of purely audial religious symbols (instrumental music) on moral behavior across three different sites: Mauritius, the Czech Republic, and the USA. Participants were exposed to one of three kinds of auditory stimuli (religious, secular, or white noise), and subsequently were given a chance to dishonestly report on solved mathematical equations in order to increase their monetary reward. The results showed cross-cultural differences in the effects of religious music on moral behavior, as well as a significant interaction between condition and religiosity across all sites, suggesting that religious participants were more influenced by the auditory religious stimuli than non-religious participants. We propose that religious music can function as a subtle cue associated with moral standards via cultural socialization and ritual participation. Such associative learning can charge music with specific meanings and create sacred cues that influence normative behavior. Our findings provide preliminary support for this view, which we hope further research will investigate more closely.

What is natural and unnatural about religion and science

Judging by its title, unsuspecting readers, unfamiliar with the scientific study of religion, might expectWhy Religion is Natural and Science is Notto be advancing some creationist argument. If anyone bought this book based on that expectation, they would be disappointed. Instead, McCauley’s book offers, among other things, one of creationists’greatest anathemas: a naturalistic account of religion. However, its primary goal is not to explain religion, nor to explain it away. As the author warns on the first page,‘‘this book compares science and religion in a way that has never been done before. And it has a surprise ending.’’Both those claims are warranted: the comparison is novel, and the conclusion surprising. In this commentary, I will raise some concerns about each one of these two aspects. Most books on religion and science either advocate for the epistemological or metaphysical supremacy of one over the other or discuss whether the two are compatible, complementary, or mutually exclusive. Instead, McCauley’s book is the first one to examine these two systems in terms of their cognitive foundations. In other words, the author is interested in how, why, and to what extent people are predisposed to create and acquire scientific and religious forms of knowledge. In his exploration of these questions, McCauley does a very thorough job of reviewing the available evidence on the cognitive underpinnings of the two systems. In doing so, he meticulously discusses folk and formal forms of both religion and science. This distinction is best exemplified in the matrix on page 231, (see figure 1) with the preferred type of cognitive processing at they-axis (reflective!maturationally natural) and appeals to agent causality at thex-axis (restricted!unrestricted). The resulting quadrants are popular religion and theology, on the one hand, and common-sense explanations of the world and science on the other. The problem is that, in holding these two baskets of fruit, the author chooses to compare the apples in one basket with the oranges in the other. McCauley puts his cards on the table from the outset, admitting to a particularly restricted operational view of‘‘science’’as a recent, institutionalized, large-scale, Western enterprise. On the other hand, he uses the term‘‘religion’’more loosely to mean not institutionalized religion but popular religiosity. Having set the rules this