A cross‐sectional study was conducted with 605 practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) to test the hypothesis that high arousal rituals promote social cohesion, primarily through identity fusion. BJJ promotion rituals are rare, highly emotional ritual events that often feature gruelling belt‐whipping gauntlets. We used the variation in such experiences to examine whether more gruelling rituals were associated with identity fusion and pro‐group behaviour. We found no differences between those who had undergone belt‐whipping and those who had not and no evidence of a correlation between pain and social cohesion. However, across the full sample we found that positive, but not negative, affective experiences of promotional rituals were associated with identity fusion and that this mediated pro‐group action. These findings provide new evidence concerning the social functions of collective rituals and highlight the importance of addressing the potentially diverging subjective experiences of painful rituals.

Translational ecology defines a collaborative effort among scientists and stakeholders to rapidly translate environmental problems into action. This approach can be applied in a fisheries management context when information needed to inform regulations is unavailable, yet conservation concerns exist. Our research uses a translational ecology framework to assess the stock status and develop research priorities for the Crevalle Jack (Caranx hippos) in the Florida Keys, U.S.A., a currently unregulated species. Interview data that compiled expert fishing guide knowledge were used to develop hypotheses tested using existing fisheries-dependent datasets to check for agreement among sources and assess the consistency of observed patterns. Six hypotheses were developed concerning the status and trends of the Crevalle Jack population in the Florida Keys, and four of these hypotheses received clear support, with agreement between guide observations and one or more of the fisheries-dependent datasets. The results of our study outline an effective translational ecology approach for recreational fisheries management designed to rapidly recognize potential management needs as identified by fishing guides, which allows for actionable science and proactive management.

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In a heated debate about the proximity of COVID-19 herd immunity, White House health advisor Dr Scott Atlas proclaimed 'You're supposed to believe the science, and I'm telling you the science' 1 . A group of infectious disease experts and former colleagues from Stanford, however, publicly criticized Dr Atlas, who is a radiologist, for spreading 'falsehoods and misrepresentation of science' through his statements about face masks, social distancing and the safety of community transmission 2 . In the 2020 pandemic crisis, all eyes turned to scientific experts to provide advice, guidelines and remedies; from COVID-19 alarmists to sceptics, appeal to scientific authority appeared a prevalent strategy on both sides of the political spectrum. Please see the Supplementary Information for a short commentary on how the current work might relate to the COVID-19 situation.A large body of research has shown that the credibility of a statement is heavily influenced by the perceived credibility of its source [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] . Children and adults are sensitive to the past track record of informants [11][12][13][14][15][16] , evidence of their benevolence toward the recipient of testimony [17][18][19] , as well as how credible the information is at face value 20,21 . From an evolutionary perspective, deference to credible authorities such as teachers, doctors and scientists is an adaptive strategy that enables effective cultural learning and knowledge transmission [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] . Indeed, if the source is considered a trusted expert, people are willing to believe claims from that source without fully understanding them. We dub this 'the Einstein effect'; people simply accept that E = mc 2 and that antibiotics can help cure pneumonia because credible authorities such as Einstein and their doctor say so, without actually understanding what these statements truly entail.Knowing that a statement originates from an epistemic authority may thus increase the likelihood of opaque messages being interpreted as meaningful and profound. According to Sperber 29 , in some cases, incomprehensible statements from credible sources may be appreciated not just in spite of, but by virtue of their incomprehensibility, as exemplified by the speech of spiritual or intellectual gurus (the 'Guru effect'). Here, we investigate to what extent different epistemic authorities affect the perceived value of nonsensical information. To this end, we contrasted judgements of gobbledegook spoken by a spiritual leader with gobbledegook spoken

The US Presidential Inauguration is a symbolic event which arouses significant emotional responses among diverse groups, and is of considerable significance to Americans' personal and social identities. We argue that the inauguration qualifies as an Imagistic Ritual (Whitehouse, 2004). Such ritual experiences are thought to produce identity fusion: a visceral sense of oneness with the group. The 2017 Inauguration of President Trump was a unique opportunity to examine how a large-scale naturalistic imagistic ritual influences the social identities of Americans who supported and opposed President Trump. We conducted a preregistered 7-week longitudinal investigation among an online sample of Americans in order to examine how President Trump's Inauguration influenced identity fusion. One core prediction was that the affective responses to the inauguration would predict positive changes in fusion, mediated by self-reflection. We did not find support for this. However, the inauguration was associated with flashbulb-like memories, and positive emotional response at the time of the event predicted changes in fusion to both ingroup and outgroup targets. Finally, both positive and negative emotional responses inspired self-reflection, but did not mediate the relationship with fusion. We discuss the implications of our findings for models linking group psychology, fusion theory, and ritual modes. All material available at the Open Science Framework: https://bit.ly/2Qu0G37.

The present study aims to understand the roles of religious fundamentalism and collective narcissism in predicting extreme behavior. It was hypothesized that religious fundamentalism may enhance collective narcissism and that this would in turn increase the tendency to endorse extreme behavior. It was also anticipated that perceptions of social tightness would moderate the indirect effect of religious fundamentalism on extreme behavior through collective narcissism.To test the hypotheses, we collected data from 788 members of Islamic religious groups in Indonesia (Male= 457, Female= 325), ages ranged from 17 to 52 (M= 25.14, SD= 8.49).Supporting the hypotheses, our findings demonstrated the validity of the expected pathways, confirming that it is important to consider the role of collective narcissism and tightnesslooseness when studying relationships between religious fundamentalism and extreme behavior.In particular, our findings demonstrate that there is a away for religious fundamentalists not to support for extreme behavior when they can have looseness culture, through which it can lower are low either in the level of collective narcissism or tightness.

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'.