Don’t stop believing: Rituals improve performance by decreasing anxiety

Abstract

a b s t r a c tFrom public speaking to first dates, people frequently experience performance anxiety. And when experienced immediately before or during performance, anxiety harms performance. Across a series of experiments, we explore the efficacy of a common strategy that people employ to cope with performance-induced anxiety: rituals. We define a ritual as a predefined sequence of symbolic actions often characterized by formality and repetition that lacks direct instrumental purpose. Using different instantiations of rituals and measures of anxiety (both physiological and self-report), we find that enacting rituals improves performance in public and private performance domains by decreasing anxiety. Belief that a specific series of behaviors constitute a ritual is a critical ingredient to reduce anxiety and improve performance: engaging in behaviors described as a ''ritual" improved performance more than engaging in the same behaviors described as ''random behaviors."

The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework

“…Second, Anastasi and Newberg (2008) measured Catholic college students' anxiety before and after a stressful experience and found that those randomly assigned to recite the Rosary, a Catholic set of prayers, experienced greater reduction in anxiety than those assigned to watch a religious video. Third, Brooks et al (2016) experimentally demonstrated that rituals can reduce anxiety by randomly assigning individuals about to engage in high-anxiety performances such as public karaoke singing or high-stakes math tests to do rituals versus other non-ritual control behaviors (e.g., passively waiting or actively trying to calm down). People who did rituals showed fewer physiological signs of arousal (e.g., lower heart rate), reported less anxiety, and, as a result, performed better than people who did not.…”

“…For example, one study by Brooks et al (2016) found that engaging in behaviors labeled as "ritual" mitigated performance anxiety, compared to doing the exact same behaviors Psychology of Rituals 18 not labeled as ritual. Presumably, labeling the same behaviors as a ritual created a belief that they were meaningful, which played a critical role in reducing anxiety.…”

Rituals and Nuptials: The Emotional and Relational Consequences of Relationship Rituals

“…Much like rituals, emotions serve both intraand interpersonal functions (Ekman 1992;Shariff and Tracy 2011); moreover, several research streams have suggested that engaging in rituals offers a wide array of emotional benefits for both individuals and groups. For example, rituals help people cope with grief (Norton and Gino 2014), regulate emotions (Boyer and Liénard 2008), reduce anxiety before performance (Brooks et al 2016), and amplify holiday enjoyment (Sezer et al 2016). Building on these findings highlighting the link between positive emotional outcomes and rituals for both individuals and groups, we posit that enacting rituals in the domain of romantic relationships is also associated with emotional benefits for couples: H1: Engaging in relationship rituals is associated with greater positive emotions.…”

The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework

“…Second, Anastasi and Newberg (2008) measured Catholic college students' anxiety before and after a stressful experience and found that those randomly assigned to recite the Rosary, a Catholic set of prayers, experienced greater reduction in anxiety than those assigned to watch a religious video. Third, Brooks et al (2016) experimentally demonstrated that rituals can reduce anxiety by randomly assigning individuals about to engage in high-anxiety performances such as public karaoke singing or high-stakes math tests to do rituals versus other nonritual control behaviors (e.g., passively waiting or actively trying to calm down). People who did rituals showed fewer physiological signs of arousal (e.g., lower heart rate), reported less anxiety, and, as a result, performed better than people who did not.…”