Examining memory for ritualized gesture in complex causal sequences

Learning few-shot imitation as cultural transmission

Cultural transmission is the domain-general social skill that allows agents to acquire and use information from each other in real-time with high fidelity and recall. It can be thought of as the process that perpetuates fit variants in cultural evolution. In humans, cultural evolution has led to the accumulation and refinement of skills, tools and knowledge across generations. We provide a method for generating cultural transmission in artificially intelligent agents, in the form of few-shot imitation. Our agents succeed at real-time imitation of a human in novel contexts without using any pre-collected human data. We identify a surprisingly simple set of ingredients sufficient for generating cultural transmission and develop an evaluation methodology for rigorously assessing it. This paves the way for cultural evolution to play an algorithmic role in the development of artificial general intelligence.

The effects of ritual and self-control resources depletion on deceptive behavior: Evidence from behavioral and ERPs studies

Although researchers have indicated that individuals with depleted self-control resources have lower self-control behavior and exhibit more deceptive behaviors, recent psychological studies have shown that ritual can improve self-control and increase the likelihood that the individual makes prosocial decisions. However, little is known about whether ritual can regulate an individual's engagement in deceptive behavior when their self-control resources are depleted. This study adopted the spot-the-difference task to investigate the influences of ritual and self-control resources depletion on simple self-control behavior and deceptive behavior (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2); furthermore, relevant neural processes were explored using event-related potentials (Experiment 3). Experiment 1 showed that individuals with depleted self-control resources had lower self-control behavior and individuals performing a ritual had higher self-control behavior. Experiment 2 showed that individuals with depleted self-control resources exhibited more deceptive behaviors and individuals performing a ritual exhibited fewer deceptive behaviors; furthermore, ritual reduced deceptive behaviors in individuals with depleted self-control resources. Experiment 3 found that individuals with depleted self-control resources had larger P2 amplitudes after performing a ritual. Moreover, individuals with depleted self-control resources had larger LPP amplitudes over parietal sites after performing a ritual. These findings suggested that performing ritual may be an effective measure of inhibiting individuals with depleted self-control resources from engaging in deceptive behavior. Our findings verify the ego-depletion model and provide a new perspective for reducing deceptive behaviors in individuals with depleted self-control resources. We provide evidence that rituals could modulate deceptive behaviors in individuals with depleted self-control resources. This reveals that performing rituals may be an effective measure for inhibiting individuals with depleted self-control resources from engaging in deceptive behavior.

Bifocal stance theory: An effort to broaden, extend, and clarify

The bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution has prompted a wide-ranging discussion with broadly three aims: to apply the theory to novel contexts; to extend the conceptual framework; to offer critical feedback on various aspects of the theory. We first discuss BST's relevance to the diverse range of topics which emerged from the commentaries, followed by a consideration of how our framework can be supplemented by and compared to other theories. Lastly, the criticisms that were raised by a subset of commentaries allow us to clarify parts of our theory.

A sacred commitment: How rituals promote group survival

Religious groups have survived for thousands of years despite drastic changes in society. One reason for their successful survival is the proliferation of group rituals (i.e. meaningful sequences of actions characterized by rigidity, formality, and repetition). We propose that rituals enhance religious group survival not only by signaling external commitment but also by fostering internal commitment toward the group in three ways: (1) enhancing belief in the group's values ('committed cognition'), (2) increasing the desire to maintain membership in the group ('committed affect'), and (3) increasing contributions to the welfare of the group ('committed behavior'). We conclude with a call for new empirical research on how participating in rituals can enhance internal commitment toward one's group (116/120).

Ritual morphospace revisited: the form, function and factor structure of ritual practice

Human rituals exhibit bewildering diversity, from the Mauritian Kavadi to Catholic communion. Is this diversity infinitely plastic or are there some general dimensions along which ritual features vary? We analyse two cross-cultural datasets: one drawn from the anthropological record and another novel contemporary dataset, to examine whether a consistent underlying set of latent dimensions in ritual structure and experiences can be detected. First, we conduct a factor analysis on 651 rituals from 74 cultural groups, in which 102 binary variables are coded. We find a reliable set of dimensions emerged, which provide potential candidates for foundational elements of ritual form. Notably, we find that the expression of features associated with dysphoric and euphoric experiences in rituals appears to be largely orthogonal. Second, we follow-up with a pre-registered factor analysis examining contemporary ritual experiences of 779 individuals from Japan, India and the US. We find supporting evidence that ritual experiences are clustered in relatively orthogonal euphoric, dysphoric, frequency and cognitive dimensions. Our findings suggest that there are important regularities in the diversity of ritual expression and experience observed across both time and culture. We discuss the implications of these findings for cognitive theories of ritual and cultural evolution.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

Homo neanderthalensis and the evolutionary origins of ritual in Homo sapiens

There is a large, if disparate, body of archaeological literature discussing specific instantiations of symbolic material culture and the possibility of ritual practices in Neanderthal populations. Despite this attention, however, no single synthesis exists that draws upon cognitive, psychological and cultural evolutionary theories of ritual. Here, we review the evidence for ritual-practice among now-extinct Homo neanderthalensis, as well as the necessary cognitive pre-conditions for such behaviour, in order to explore the evolution of ritual in Homo sapiens. We suggest that the currently available archaeological evidence indicates that Neanderthals may have used 'ritualization' to increase the successful transmission of technical knowledge across generations-providing an explanation for the technological stability of the Middle Palaeolithic and attesting to a survival strategy differing from near-contemporary H. sapiens. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

An experimental examination of object-directed ritualized action in children across two cultures

Ritualized actions are common in daily life, and prevalent across cultures. Adults have been shown, under experimental conditions, to treat objects subjected to ritualized action as special and different relative to objects subjected to non-ritualized action. Similarly, children as young as 4, are sensitive to ritualized actions–frequently reproducing such actions at high fidelity. The current cross-cultural experiment attempts to extend existing findings among two culturally distinct groups of children with regard to object-directed rituals. We predicted that children’s preference for a reward would be influenced by ritualized action (but not non-ritualized action). Over two trials we presented children in Australia (N = 93; mean age = 6.03 years, SD = 2.07 years) and Vanuatu (N = 109; mean age = 6.13 years, SD = 1.96 years) with two identical rewards, which was either subjected to ritualized action or non-ritualized action. Contrary to previous findings among adults, ritualized action did not influence children’s preference for a reward. We frame the current results in the context of socially relevant group rituals, and discuss the implications for both wider theory and methods. We conclude with a call for pre-registered replications.