Dimitris Xygalatas
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
That's what people say when I ask them why they perform their rituals. The most common answer I get is just what we do. So as human beings, we tend to do as the Romans do. This is very important for us because we are a hypersocial species. So most of the things we learn in life, they actually come from other people, whether it's through intentional instruction or just by observing them.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
So we have evolved to to imitate what others around us do and especially imitate what people of our group do and particularly influential individuals in that group. So if everybody in your group does it, if the most prestigious individuals in your group do it, then you end up doing it as well. And by doing this, you also reap the benefits of doing it.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
We see, for example, that people who engage in very painful rituals, that gives a boost in their reputation. So there are studies conducted in India by an anthropologist called Ellie Power, and she's finding that performing these very painful rituals just once a year is the equivalent of going to the temple every single week in terms of how you're perceived by others.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
People who perform these rituals more frequently or who pay a higher price to perform them, they are seen as more trustworthy. They're better able to call upon others when they need things like borrowing money or help with taking care of their children and so on and so forth. So those social benefits are very real.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
At least it seems that at a reflective conscious level, they are not why they do it. So people, even as people recognize that by taking part in that ritual, you feel bonded with each other. I don't think anybody has ever told me, I do this ritual to boost my status. Now, at the back of people's head, that might be there, of course.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And at some level, we're conscious that by virtue of engaging in those rituals, that changes the way people see us. But I don't think that's the primary motivation. I think the primary motivation is just to fit in.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Absolutely. I tend to see rituals as social technologies. They are successful social technologies because they're able to harness all kinds of different mechanisms, the psychological mechanisms. So it is not just pain and suffering that they can recruit in order to make an occasion seem special. They can recruit things like emotional arousal. They can recruit things like sensory pageantry.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And that's what you see with holiday celebrations. They're bursting with pageantry. They're full of colors and smells and sometimes literally bells and whistles. So they stimulate all of your senses. And because the most important moments of our lives are related to extravagant ceremonies, weddings, graduation ceremonies, birthday parties.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Whenever we see an extravagant ceremony immediately in our brain, that signals that this is an important moment. And this is an important moment. This is a moment to pay attention to. This is a moment to look forward to. This is a moment to fully embrace.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
The way I see it is that ritual has always been part of our nature and it's just as much a part of our nature today as it has always been. Sometimes we might get the sense that ritual is in decline just because in parts of the world, in the West in particular, we see that membership in at least the major religious organizations is declining.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
But that is not to say that people are abandoning ritual altogether. In fact, what I see is that the more people
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
stop performing some of the more traditional rituals perhaps related to to the church in the american setting the more they seek the same kinds of experiences in other domains of life so you can find collective rituals for example in the context of musical concerts or sports stadiums or events like burning man or coachella You can find them in politics.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
You can find them in all of our secular institutions. You can find them in the courtroom. You can find them in university graduation ceremonies and so on and so forth. So ritual has always been there and it's still there. The context in which it is performed might often change, but our need for ritual remains the same.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
That is true. That is what it feels like to people. We're not supposed to question certain traditions. And ritual traditions are particularly the kinds of traditions that feel this way. There are studies that actually show that when you suggest to people that certain of their most ritualized public holidays, things like Thanksgiving,
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
If you were to change those holidays, people get morally appalled by this. They find this offensive that somebody would suggest making changes to those rituals. They're not supposed to change, even as they do change, because Thanksgiving actually in the past was moved. It was moved by a week earlier so that the holiday period would be extended and people would spend more money.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
People didn't like that. Most states actually refused to enforce this. And recently, so now nobody remembers this anymore. But recently there was a study that asked people this question. How would you feel if the government wanted to move Thanksgiving by a week? And people really felt that this would be offensive.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
It's very important, and we know this. We've all heard people, at least I've heard people say that because their university didn't have a graduation ceremony, they felt that their degree was diminished. And we saw people go to great lengths to offer this ritual experience to the students.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
So in India, there was a university that created avatars for every student and had a virtual ceremony and invited... famous guest speakers for the commencement address, and they had their own avatars.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
In other parts of the world, we saw that schools might have socially distant graduation ceremonies in all sorts of innovative ways, including somewhere a ski lift so they could maintain social distance. So our institutions recognize this need for ritual.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Thank you, Mike. It's been a real pleasure.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Hi, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Rituals are regularly repeated sets of actions that feel special. They're not ordinary. And yet they have either no stated goal or even when they do have a goal, that goal is not causally related to the actions themselves. I like to give the example of brushing your teeth, which is not a ritual.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And the reason it's not a ritual is that it has a very specific purpose and the actions we undertake to achieve that purpose are causally related. So I move my brush up and down and that helps me remove food from my teeth, helping me
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
make them clean now if i woke up every morning and i and i waved my toothbrush in the air with the belief that this will help me clean my teeth or for that matter with without any belief at all now that would be an example of a ritual so it's really it's really something that does nothing and yet it has meaning anyway Exactly.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And that's why it's such a fascinating topic to study, because people consider their rituals deeply meaningful, and they put a lot of time, resources and effort into those rituals. Some of the rituals that I studied even involve very painful, even excruciating things like walking on fire, having your body pierced with needles and skewers.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And people consider these rituals very, very important in their lives. And yet, when I ask them why they perform these rituals, and I've asked hundreds, if not thousands of people that question, they have a very hard time explaining why they're important. Most of the time, they'll just look at me and they'll go, what do you mean? These are our traditions. That's what we do. That's who we are.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
As far as we know, there is no culture, whether past or present, that has no rituals. In fact, when we look at our own cultures, we will see that the most important moments of our lives, whether these are personal moments, like birthdays and weddings, or collective moments, like presidential inaugurations. All of these moments are shrouded in ritual.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
This is the big question that my research has been asking. Now, anthropologists have long pointed out that rituals... although they have no practical impact on the world, that is not to say that they have no impact at all. So they've pointed out that rituals can have important psychological and social effects. But these theories remained untested for a very long time.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And it's only in recent years that we were able to put them to the test and bring scientific measurements into anthropological research in order to be able to understand what these rituals actually do for us. And what we're finding out is that they can play very important functions for us.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
They help us find comfort, help us find connection and meaning in life, and they help shape our sense of who we are as a person and as a member of the various groups that we belong to.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
True. But even those actions that seem utterly pointless... we are finding that they might have important functions as well, important psychological functions. For example, you mentioned good luck rituals.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
We're finding that if you were to search for places or situations in which individual ritualization takes place, things like superstitions, for example, the best place to look for that would be things like a casino or a sports stadium or perhaps a hospital or war zones.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
all of these situations that's where we see that people spontaneously engage in all of those ritualized actions and what all of these situations have in common is that they involve a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety so anthropologists have theorized a long time ago that perhaps engaging in rituals is an attempt to overcome this anxiety now how exactly this works we didn't know recent research provides evidence about how this exactly might work
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
For example, in my own research that I've done with my colleagues, when we bring people into a lab and we stress them up, we see that their behavior becomes more ritualized. Their movements become more repetitive. And we take this research into the real world and we go into religious temples and we measure people's anxiety before and after they perform their cultural rituals.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And we see that performing those rituals helps them reduce anxiety. We can see this in their heart rate variability, in their cortisol levels, and even at the subjective level, they feel calmer. How does that exactly happen?
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
In other studies in the laboratory, we see that when people engage in those repetitive movements that are very common in rituals, even if they're stripped of any kind of meaning, that in itself helps them deal with anxiety. And the reason for that is that it is related to the way our brain works. Our brain doesn't just passively absorb stimuli.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
It makes active predictions about the state of the world all of the time. Before I even finish the sentence that I'm about to say, you have certain expectations about what's going to follow. Our brain does this in all kinds of domains. And when we don't have this ability to make predictions, when we don't know what's about to come, that's when we feel stressed.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And that's where ritual comes in, because if ritual is anything, it is structure. It is order. Ritual is very predictable. When we engage in a familiar ritual, we know exactly what's going to happen. We know exactly when it is going to happen, and we know exactly how it's going to happen. And this gives our brain a sense of control.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And it doesn't really matter whether this sense of control is real or illusory. All that matters is that it actually works. And this is what we're finding in our studies. People who engage in those repetitive rituals, they're better able to cope with anxiety.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
That is an excellent point. In fact, some of the rituals that I've studied, they involve unbearable pain. Some of the ceremonies that are studied on the island of Mauritius, for example, they are Hindu ceremonies that involve piercing the body with hundreds of needles and even skewers and rods through the cheeks and walking barefooted on the burning asphalt under the midsummer tropical sun.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
As far as we know, there is no culture, whether past or present, that has no rituals. In fact, when we look at our own cultures, we will see that the most important moments of our lives, like birthdays and weddings, all of these moments are shrouded in ritual.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And all that is happening as people are carrying these very large shrines that can weigh 100 pounds. And when they reach their destination, which is six hours later, they have to climb this hill carrying these burdens up to the top of the hill where the Temple of Muruga lies. So this is really a full day of self-imposed torture.
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Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And even in this context, we have done studies that show that they might offer tangible benefits to those people who do them. So in the context of these rituals, we look at people's physiological reactions. And of course, we see that during that day, they're extremely stressed, orders of magnitude more stressed than they would be in their everyday life.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And we see this in things like their electrodermal activity, so their skin conductance, which is a measure of stress. Now, when we measure the health outcomes of those rituals, we see that a month later, those who have engaged in those rituals, they have better subjective wellbeing and quality of life than those who didn't.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And within the group that does the ritual, we see that the more they suffer on the day, the more pronounced these effects.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Yes, and here's where meaning comes in. We know from psychological research that we intuitively attribute meaning to effort. So if you think of some of the moments in our lives that we consider to be the most important to us, and those are the things that fundamentally shaped us as a person. So they changed our personal autobiographical narrative.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Those moments will very often include times of suffering. the time perhaps we climbed a mountain or the time a woman might have given birth, the time we survived a car accident, even some of these traumatic moments, we come to consider them significant in our personal narrative. We attribute meaning to them. And the fact that rituals involve
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
This type of suffering that, at least in the rituals that I study, is self-imposed. So the fact that you chose to do this ritual, the fact that you chose to put so much effort into it, also makes it a much more meaningful experience in our mind and in our memory.