Extreme rituals in the lab: Effect of excitation on helping behaviour

KUNDT, Radek. Extreme rituals in the lab: Effect of excitation on helping behaviour. In Principles of Cognitive Psychology in Practice 2015 (APCPP 2015), Brno, 21.-22.5.2015. 2015.

Basic information

• Original name: Extreme rituals in the lab: Effect of excitation on helping behaviour
• Authors: KUNDT, Radek (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Principles of Cognitive Psychology in Practice 2015 (APCPP 2015), Brno, 21.-22.5.2015, 2015.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Requested lectures
• Field of Study: 60300 6.3 Philosophy, Ethics and Religion
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/15:00084435
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: ritual; arousal; controlled experiment; prosociality; helping behaviour
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Paper presents the results of a recent controlled experiment which examined the differential effects of ritual arousal on social behaviour. Previous research has examined specific aspects commonly found in collective rituals that might modulate group attitudes and behaviours (i.e., inter-personal motor synchrony: Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2011; Reddish et al., 2013; Wiltermuth, 2012). We propose that a common mechanism related to physiological arousal might explain these contrasting effects. A ritual task was used designed to induce autonomic arousal stripped of any social, semantic, or emotional associations (high and low intensity body movements involving repetition, redundancy, and no obvious end-goal), followed by the administration of either prosocial or antisocial video game primes and finally by a helping task to examine the effects of individual ritual arousal and its interaction with contextual cues on ritual prosociality. This study makes a novel conceptual contribution to the literature on social functions of human rituals investigating the link between this deep-rooted behavioural propensity of our species and ingroup cooperation/cohesion as well as outgroup competition/hostility. It is the first study assessing in laboratory conditions and through behavioural measures in one design diametrically opposite effects of the ritual arousal on social behaviour depending on the prime it is coupled with.

Links

• EE2.3.20.0048, research and development project: Name: Laboratoř pro experimentální výzkum náboženství