Professor of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712, USA.
Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD 4072, Australia.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Aug 17;375(1805):20190419. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0419. Epub 2020 Jul 29.
Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that rituals are a psychologically prepared and culturally inherited behavioural hallmark of our species. The dramatic diversity of ritual practices ranges from simple greetings to elaborate religious ceremonies, from the benign to life-threatening. Yet our scientific understanding of this core human trait remains limited. Explaining the universality, functionality and diversity of ritual requires insight from multiple disciplines. This special issue integrates research from anthropology, archaeology, biology, primatology, cognitive science, psychology, religious studies and demography to build an interdisciplinary account of ritual. The objective is to contribute to an integrative explanation of ritual by addressing Tinbergen's four key questions. These include answering ultimate questions about the (i) phylogeny and (ii) adaptive functions of ritual; and proximate questions about the (iii) mechanisms and (iv) ontogeny of ritual. The intersection of these four complementary lines of inquiry yields new avenues for theory and research into this fundamental aspect of the human condition, and in so doing, into the coevolution of cognition and culture. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.
跨社会科学学科的趋同发展提供了证据，表明仪式是我们物种的一种心理准备和文化遗传的行为标志。仪式实践的显著多样性从简单的问候到精心制作的宗教仪式，从良性到危及生命。然而，我们对这一核心人类特征的科学理解仍然有限。解释仪式的普遍性、功能性和多样性需要来自多个学科的洞察力。本期特刊综合了来自人类学、考古学、生物学、灵长类动物学、认知科学、心理学、宗教研究和人口学的研究，构建了一个关于仪式的跨学科描述。其目的是通过解决 Tinbergen 的四个关键问题，为仪式的综合解释做出贡献。这些问题包括回答关于仪式的（i）系统发育和（ii）适应功能的终极问题；以及关于仪式的（iii）机制和（iv）发生的近因问题。这四条互补的研究线索的交叉为理解人类状况的这一基本方面以及认知和文化的共同进化提供了新的理论和研究途径。本文是主题为“仪式复兴：对最人性行为的新见解”的特刊的一部分。
