The article in the journal Evolution and Behavior, Ritual increases children’s affiliation with in-group members, analyzes how new rituals created in the school context — to replace more generic task routines — build greater community among the children. They feel stronger affiliation towards each other, that they are more in a group. It is by Nicole Wen, Patricia Herrmann, and Cristine Legare, from the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Psychology.
The Abstract:
This study examined the impact of ritual participation on children’s in-group affiliation (N = 71, 4–11-year-old children). A novel social group paradigm was used in an afterschool program to test the influence of a ritual versus a control task on a measure of affiliation with in-group versus out-group members. The data support the hypothesis that the experience of participating in a ritual increases in-group affiliation to a greater degree than group activity alone. The results provide insight into the early-developing preference for in-group members and are consistent with the proposal that rituals facilitate in-group cohesion. We propose that humans are psychologically prepared to engage in ritual as a means of in-group affiliation.
Also useful is the authors’ summary of recent literature that describes how rituals work in organizations to build community and problem-solving capacity.
We hypothesize that the performance of socially shared rituals amplifies the early developing and empirically documented preference for in-group members over out-group members (Legare & Wen, 2014). This hypothesis is consistent with new research investigating the extent to which rituals function as a mechanism for increasing social group cohesion (Whitehouse & Lanman, 2014). Rituals facilitate high fidelity cultural transmission, by (a) serving as social identity markers (e.g., dressing in a particular way) (Cosmides & Tooby, 2013), (b) demonstrating commitment to the group (e.g., more costly rituals signal commitment to group values) (Henrich, 2009; McElreath, Boyd, & Richerson, 2003), (c) facilitating cooperation with their coalition (e.g. rituals signal group commitment and increase group cooperation) (Ruffle & Sosis, 2007; Sosis & Bressler, 2003; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003), and (d) increasing group cohesion (e.g., rituals serve as mechanisms for social cohesion and foster longevity of social groups) (Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2011; Soler, 2012). Because rituals are resistant to individual innovation and change, they facilitate coordinated and cooperative group action, essential to solving important human adaptive problems associated with group living (Legare & Watson-Jones, 2015; Watson-Jones & Legare, 2015).
Their results in this study show that rituals — in this case, ones designed around colors, shapes, and clapping, increased the children’s affiliation with the group.
