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Watch me, watch you: ritual participation increases in-group displays and out-group monitoring in children

Nicole J. Wen,A. Willard,Michaela Caughy,C. Legare

Published 2020 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences

ABSTRACT

Collective rituals serve social functions for the groups that perform them, including identifying group members and signalling group commitment. A novel social group paradigm was used in an afterschool programme (N = 60 4–11-year-olds) to test the influence of participating in a ritual task on in-group displays and out-group monitoring over repeated exposures to the group. The results demonstrate that ritual participation increases in-group displays (i.e. time spent displaying materials to in-group members) and out-group monitoring (i.e. time spent looking at out-group members) compared with a control task across three time points. This study provides evidence for the processes by which rituals may influence children's behaviours towards in- and out-group members and discusses implications for understanding the development of ritual cognition and behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.

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