The functions of ritual in social groups

Norenzayan et al. make a compelling argument that cultural evolution has selected for beliefs and behaviors that increase group solidarity and reduce intragroup conflict. Over time, groups that had religious beliefs and behaviors that promoted intragroup prosociality had a competitive advantage over other groups. Prosocial religions also made it possible to increase group size through outsourcing third-party monitoring of exchanges to Big Gods.

As social networks have increased in size over human history, rituals have allowed groups to remain cohesive, while reducing the need for physical and social proximity. Rituals, which we define as socially stipulated, causally opaque group conventions (Legare & Souza 2012; 2014), are central to the cultural evolution of prosocial religions. The role of ritual in cultural evolution raises compelling questions about the process by which the elements of rituals were aggregated and honed to address the adaptive problems of group living. Here, we discuss how the social functions of ritual solve adaptive problems associated with group living. Ritual is a distinctly human predisposition – a psychologically prepared, culturally inherited, species-specific behavior. We propose that the evolution of ritual cognition builds upon selective social learning biases that may have become increasingly specialized for affiliative functions within social groups.

Engaging in rituals serves a variety of functions that solve adaptive problems associated...