The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony
From Australia to the Arctic, human groups engage in synchronous behaviour during communal rituals. Because ritualistic synchrony is widespread, many argue that it is functional for human groups, encouraging large-scale cooperation and group cohesion. Here, we offer a more nuanced perspective on syn...
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crroyalsociety:10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 2024-06-02T08:02:07+00:00 The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony Gelfand, Michele J. Caluori, Nava Jackson, Joshua Conrad Taylor, Morgan K. 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 en eng The Royal Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences volume 375, issue 1805, page 20190432 ISSN 0962-8436 1471-2970 journal-article 2020 crroyalsociety https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 2024-05-07T14:16:55Z From Australia to the Arctic, human groups engage in synchronous behaviour during communal rituals. Because ritualistic synchrony is widespread, many argue that it is functional for human groups, encouraging large-scale cooperation and group cohesion. Here, we offer a more nuanced perspective on synchrony's function. We review research on synchrony's prosocial effects, but also discuss synchrony's antisocial effects such as encouraging group conflict, decreasing group creativity and increasing harmful obedience. We further argue that a tightness–looseness (TL) framework helps to explain this trade-off and generates new predictions for how ritualistic synchrony should evolve over time, where it should be most prevalent, and how it should affect group well-being. We close by arguing that synthesizing the literature on TL with the literature on synchrony has promise for understanding synchrony's role in a broader cultural evolutionary framework. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic The Royal Society Arctic Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 375 1805 20190432 |
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Open Polar |
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The Royal Society |
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crroyalsociety |
language |
English |
description |
From Australia to the Arctic, human groups engage in synchronous behaviour during communal rituals. Because ritualistic synchrony is widespread, many argue that it is functional for human groups, encouraging large-scale cooperation and group cohesion. Here, we offer a more nuanced perspective on synchrony's function. We review research on synchrony's prosocial effects, but also discuss synchrony's antisocial effects such as encouraging group conflict, decreasing group creativity and increasing harmful obedience. We further argue that a tightness–looseness (TL) framework helps to explain this trade-off and generates new predictions for how ritualistic synchrony should evolve over time, where it should be most prevalent, and how it should affect group well-being. We close by arguing that synthesizing the literature on TL with the literature on synchrony has promise for understanding synchrony's role in a broader cultural evolutionary framework. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Gelfand, Michele J. Caluori, Nava Jackson, Joshua Conrad Taylor, Morgan K. |
spellingShingle |
Gelfand, Michele J. Caluori, Nava Jackson, Joshua Conrad Taylor, Morgan K. The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
author_facet |
Gelfand, Michele J. Caluori, Nava Jackson, Joshua Conrad Taylor, Morgan K. |
author_sort |
Gelfand, Michele J. |
title |
The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
title_short |
The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
title_full |
The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
title_fullStr |
The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
title_full_unstemmed |
The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
title_sort |
cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic |
genre_facet |
Arctic |
op_source |
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences volume 375, issue 1805, page 20190432 ISSN 0962-8436 1471-2970 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 |
container_title |
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
container_volume |
375 |
container_issue |
1805 |
container_start_page |
20190432 |
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1800746617591037952 |