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Ritual and Prosociality (Costly Signalling Account (Costly signalling and…
Ritual and Prosociality
Costly Signalling Account
Terminology: rituals and prosociality
Ritual
Stable object of analysis in the first place?
A religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order
Causal opacity
: ritual behaviours = assumed by Ps and observed alike to lack specifiable causal structure and have no knowable instrumental connections to end goals, if indeed any are imputed to them
Including phenomena - synchronic movement, causally opaque action, and both euphoric and dysphoric arousal
Prosociality
Furthers interest of social group
Blogowska et al., (2013)
Religiosity predicted helping of an in-group member (volunteering time to take part in a study)
Aggression towards a member of moral out-group (gay target)
Punishing someone from moral out-group = prosocial?
Clearly and unambiguously antisocial
Costly rituals and prosociality: evidence
Sosis (2000)
Comparative study - 200 religious and secular communes
Religious communes = 2+ costly requirements on their members as secular communes
Sosis & Bressler (2003)
Religious communities = more likely to outlast non-religious counterparts - 4x as likely in given year
No. of costly requirements in religious communes = +ively correlated with group lifespan
Behavioural Studies
Behavioural studies have examined whether participation in costly rituals promotes prosocial behaviour
Sosis & Ruffle (2003)
Participants: members of religious and secular Israeli kibbutzim
Experimental economic game: how much to withdraw and keep? If withdrawals = more than 100 then players get nothing, if equal or less than 100 then players keep withdrawals and remainder x1.5 and split
Results
Less money withdrawn in religious
Freq of engagement in rituals -ively predicted amount withdrawn
Soler (2012)
Costly signalling in northeastern Brazil - communities with religion that originated from enslaved Africans transported to Brazil during the slave trade
Believe in powerful God served by lesser deities
Measure of costly behaviours - completed religious signalling scale, measuring costly signals of religiousity
DV = Public goods game
Results
Higher CRSS scores = more cooperative in PGG
Reported receiving more cooperation from fellow religious community members
Xygalatas et al. (2013)
Two rituals in an annual Hindu festival
1 = low ordeal ritual involving singing and collective prayer
2 = high ordeal ritual involving body piercing, carrying heavy bamboo structures, and dragging carts attached by hooks to the skin for hours before climbing a mountain to reach a temple
Method: following ritual, questionnaire in room near temple, paid 200 rupees for participating, opportunity to anon donate this to temple
Results
High ordeal donated sig. more
Higher levels of self reported pain = greater donations
Causality
Costly ritual > prosocial behaviour OR prosocial disposition > costly ritual
More prosocial ps are likely to undertake the high ordeal ritual because they are prosocial?
Bastian, Jetten & Ferris (2014)
Pain induction - induced pain in uni students: hands in ice water, perform leg squats, eat chilli pepper (in small groups)
Pain vs non-pain conditions
Economic game
Ps choose number between 1 and 7
7 = highest pay off but only if call other group members chose 7 too
If differ, lower numbers = higher pay off
1 = least cooperative - ps get max., group get min.
7 = cooperative but risk if group defects
Higher score = more cooperative
Pain condition chose higher numbers
Costly signalling and rituals
Signaling
Sender emits signals that exaggerate his/her qualities
Receiver "discounts" signals as appropriate
Reliable, hard to fake signal
Need accurate signals to allocate resources and power
Cost may authenticate a resource or intention because waste is the luxury only the resource rich or predictably committed can afford
Verbally expressed beliefs > deception
Humans evolved cog. mechanisms that privilege behavioural commitment over verbal commitment
Difficult to fake cog. intent in behavioural commitment
Costly rituals = hard to fake signals that authenticate commitment to a common morality, enhancing solidarity and trust
Costly rituals
authenticate commitment and secure cooperation, enhancing the survival prospects of the groups
Therefore more likely to outlast other groups
Also cultural means to generating affiliation
E.g. Bullet ant ritual
Stotting
Equivalent in natural world
Biological puzzle - similar to rituals
Expend unnecessary energy
More visible
Stotting serves this function: only fit gazelle can afford the costs associated with stotting
Problems with the costly signalling account
Causality
If costly rituals are signals prosociality, why should emitting signal increase prosocial?
Hard to fake?
Signal of prosociality is reliable only to the extent that it is costlier to fake by potential freeloaders than for cooperators
what prevents selfish impostors from faking prosocial intent by emitting the signal?
Voluntary?
Costly rituals are often compulsory, which undermines their value as a signal of commitment
Shared experience
Shared traumatic experiences can bond people together
Such experiences create the group rather than signalling commitment to a pre-existing group
Psychological Kinship Account
Kinship mechanisms
Kin recognition in humans depends on cues that cultural traditions can mimic and exploit > force cooperation
Two broad types
Direct, phenotypic cues e.g. visual similarity to self
Indirect, contextual cues: e.g. co-residence early in life, same caregivers
Phenotypic cues: costumes, synchrony
Involve artificial phenotypic cues of kinship
Simliar costumes, headdress, face/body paint > visual
Rituals can exploit kinships mechanisms
Synchrony
= key features of many rituals
Foster tight ties + cooperative intent
Hypothesised to promote group cohesion
Synchronic movement increases cooperation among participants
& Destructive obedience
Political figures (Hitler/Mussolini) incorporated synchrony into political gatherings
Wiltermuth (2012)
Follow experimenter around campus - synchrony, out-of-phase, neutral
Then perform task to understand physiological responses to performing "tasks that people in some parts of the world may find objectionable"
Wiltermuth & Heath (2009)
Results
In-sync = more bugs in grinders
Therefore more susceptible to following orders
Grinding up bugs - no. of bugs inserted into grinder = measure o obedience
Valdesolo & DeSteno (2011)
Ps tapped to recorded tone
Confederate tapped either in and out of sync with the focal point
Ps perceived synchronous others as more similar to them than asynchronous ps
Synchronous others also evoked more comparison when assigned an arduous task, and ps were more likely to help them with task
Fischer et al. (2013)
Investigated effects of nine naturally occurring rituals on prosociality
Rituals synchrony increased perceptions of oneness with others
Synchronous body movements were likely to enhance prosocial attitudes
Interpersonal multi-sensory-stimulation experiments - Visuotactile synchrony causes Ps to perceive others as both more physically and psychologically similar to themselves
Sharon-David et al. (2018)
Intimacy higher following synchronised versus unsynchronised interactions
e.g. same-sex strangers peddled bikes in either sync or not while discussing personal events, then rated how intimacy they see
Contextual cues: intense shared experiences
Co-Ps in intense arousing rituals may gain a quantity of shared experience normally possible to accumulate only through large number of shared interactions
Such rituals may function as a contextual cue to kinship, contributing to group cohesion by fostering a sense of "fusion" with the collective
E.g. military > hazing
Fusion
Merging of personal and social identities, visceral sense of oneness, shared essence, reciprocal strength, feeling invulnerability
Distinct, both conceptually and empirically, from Group Identification
Social Identification vs. Fusion
Identification - depersonalisation, group eclipses person & relationships
Fusion - Personal levels remain agentic and influential, allowing relational ties between group members, as well as collective, ties to operate
Measuring
Pictorial (
Swann et al., 2009
)
Choose the option that best represents your relationship with the group
Venn-diagram
Verbal (
Gomez et al., 2011
)
I am one with my country
I am strong because of my country
I make my country strong
Fusion and Self-Sacrifice
Trolley-Problem
Swann et al. (2010)
If fused with group = more likely to sacrifice one-self to save in-group members
When not fused = more likely to let 5 in-group members die
& Extreme Pro-Group Behaviour
Fusion = potent predictor of extreme sacrifices, such as giving up one's life for the group
The act of forfeiting one's life not readily amenable to direct observation
Propensity to self-sacrifice: 7-item self-report measure of intentions to fight and die on behalf of one's group
Fusion robustly predicts responses to the fight and die measure (controlling for identification) in 11 countries spanning 6 continents
Beyond self report
Other studies have used measures of actual behaviours (less extreme)
E.g. fused spainards especially likely to donate personal funds to support financially distressed compatriots
Relational Ties
Swann et al. (2014)
Strongly fused personas care about individual members of the group as well as abstract collective
Self-reported feelings of familal connection to other group members statistically mediate links between fusion + pro-group outcomes
Fused persons view their fellow group members as kin and these perceptions motivate taking extreme actions on their behalf
Example: Boston Marathon Bombing
Americans strongly fused with US = more inclinded to provide support bombing victims
Degree to which Ps reported perceiving fellow Americans as psychological kin mediated the relationship between fusion and support behaviours