Cargando…

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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gelfand, Michele J., Caluori, Nava, Jackson, Joshua Conrad, Taylor, Morgan K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7423264/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32594883
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432
_version_ 1783570144572735488
author Gelfand, Michele J.
Caluori, Nava
Jackson, Joshua Conrad
Taylor, Morgan K.
author_facet Gelfand, Michele J.
Caluori, Nava
Jackson, Joshua Conrad
Taylor, Morgan K.
author_sort Gelfand, Michele J.
collection PubMed
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 Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7423264
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher The Royal Society
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-74232642020-08-16 The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony Gelfand, Michele J. Caluori, Nava Jackson, Joshua Conrad Taylor, Morgan K. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles 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'. The Royal Society 2020-08-17 2020-06-29 /pmc/articles/PMC7423264/ /pubmed/32594883 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Articles
Gelfand, Michele J.
Caluori, Nava
Jackson, Joshua Conrad
Taylor, Morgan K.
The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony
title 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_short The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony
title_sort cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7423264/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32594883
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432
work_keys_str_mv AT gelfandmichelej theculturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT caluorinava theculturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT jacksonjoshuaconrad theculturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT taylormorgank theculturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT gelfandmichelej culturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT caluorinava culturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT jacksonjoshuaconrad culturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony
AT taylormorgank culturalevolutionarytradeoffofritualisticsynchrony