School of Psychology, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, UK.
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Aug 17;375(1805):20190436. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0436. Epub 2020 Jul 29.
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'.
人类的仪式表现出令人眼花缭乱的多样性，从毛里求斯的卡瓦迪到天主教圣餐。这种多样性是无限可塑的，还是沿着某些一般维度变化的？我们分析了两个跨文化数据集：一个来自人类学记录，另一个是新颖的当代数据集，以检验是否可以检测到仪式结构和体验中一致的潜在维度。首先，我们对来自 74 个文化群体的 651 个仪式进行了因子分析，其中编码了 102 个二元变量。我们发现了一组可靠的维度，它们为仪式形式的基本要素提供了潜在的候选者。值得注意的是，我们发现与仪式中不愉快和愉快体验相关的特征的表达似乎在很大程度上是正交的。其次，我们跟进了一项预先注册的因子分析，该分析考察了来自日本、印度和美国的 779 个人的当代仪式体验。我们有证据表明，仪式体验在相对正交的愉悦、不愉快、频率和认知维度上是聚类的。我们的发现表明，在时间和文化上观察到的仪式表达和体验的多样性中存在重要的规律性。我们讨论了这些发现对仪式和文化进化的认知理论的影响。本文是主题为“仪式复兴：对最人性行为的新见解”的一部分。
