Rituals Flashcards
Characteristics of Rituals
- Includes a religious specialist
- Set rules and roles
- Have a set purpose of effect
- Have a cause and consequence
- Convey a meaning
- Different from mundane actions
- Supernatural involvement
Ritual Competence Hypothesis (Lawson and McCauley, 2002)
- Rituals are natural and fall under cognitive constraints
- Rituals are an action representation system
Action Representation System definition
A set of cognitive mechanisms accounting for actions. Usually involves an agent, act/instrument and patient.
Rituals definition - Ritual Competence Hypothesis
Rituals involve an agent, an act, and a patient.
Activities definition - Ritual Competence Hypothesis
Activities always involve an agent and an act
Justification for rituals - Ritual Competence Hypothesis
- Change of status (baptised or married)
- They have an insider/outsider criterion (baptism)
- They are often connected to other rituals (conformation)
Types of ritual - Ritual Competence Hypothesis
- Special Agent Ritual = weddings, funeral, circumcision
- Special Instrument Ritual = divination
- Special Patient Ritual = sacrifices, rituals of penance
History of rituals - Ritual Competence Hypothesis
There is an idea that the agent was once a patient undergoing the same ritual, and the first ritual was done with God as an agent.
Which type of ritual is reversible?
Special Agent Ritual
Which type of ritual is repeatable?
Special Instrument and Special Patient
Which type of ritual has substitutability?
Social Instrument and Special Patient
Barret and Lawson (2001)
Gave university students religious actions and varied the supernatural representation. The students rated which actions would likely give good crops. Those with two ‘special’ markers were more likely to work while those with no ‘special’ markers were least likely to work.
Modes of Religiosity (Whitehouse, 2002 and 2004)
- Transmission of rituals
- Rituals must take on a form that people can remember
- High frequency = easily remembered but loss of motivation (boring)
- Must conform to how our memory works
Two modes of religiosity (Whitehouse, 2002)
Doctrinal and Imagistic
Doctrinal Religiosity definition
Frequent repetition of the ritual, which causes you to remember the religious teachings and rituals. This requires religious leaders., which means the religion spreads widely and creates more communities.
Imaginistic Religiosity definition
There isn’t frequent repetition, rather based on episodic memory. Events are based on high arousal. This brings intense cohesion in the community. Therefore the religions are exclusive and hard to spread and there is a lack of leadership and lack of orthodox. However, the events are personal (spontaneous exegetical reflection), leading to diversity.
Psychological features of doctrinal religiosity
- High transmissive frequency
- Low levels of arousal
- Semantic schemas and implicit scripts
- Learned ritual meaning
- Narrative techniques of revelations
Psychological features of imagistic religiosity
- Low transmission
- High levels of arousal
- Episodic and flashbulb memories
- Internally generated meaning
- Iconic techniques of revelation
Socio-political features of doctrinal religiosity
- Hardly any social cohesion
- Required leadership
- Inclusive
- Rapid spread
- Large-scale
- High uniformity
- Centralised structure
Socio-political features of imagistic religiosity
- Intense social cohesion
- Absent leadership
- Exclusive
- Slow spread
- Small scale
- Low uniformity
- Non-centralised
Cultural morphospace of ritual form (Atkinson and Whitehouse, 2013)
- Modes are not typologies but “cultural attractor“ positions.
- Ritual frequency should be related to levels of arousal.
- They found that the rituals that are once per generation have the highest form of arousal, those that are daily don’t have that much arousal.
- Predictors of arousal include frequency, community size, and agricultural intensity.
