The Impact of Precaution and Practice on the Performance of a Risky Motor Task

Abstract

The association between threat perception and motor execution, mediated by evolved precaution systems, often results in ritual-like behavior, including many idiosyncratic acts that seem irrelevant to the task at hand. This study tested the hypothesis that threat-detection during performance of a risky motor task would result in idiosyncratic activity that is not necessary for task completion. We asked biology students to follow a particular set of instructions in mixing three solutions labeled “bio-hazardous” and then repeat this operation with “non-hazardous” substances (or vice versa). We observed a longer duration of the overall performance, a greater repertoire of acts, longer maximal act duration, and longer mean duration of acts in the “risky” task when it was performed before the “non-risky” task. Some, but not all, of these differences were eliminated when a “non-risky” task preceded the “risky” one. The increased performance of idiosyncratic unnecessary activity is in accordance with the working hypothesis of the present study: ritualized idiosyncratic activities are performed in response to a real or illusionary threat, as a means to alleviate anxiety.

Effects of Anxiety on Spontaneous Ritualized Behavior

“…Our results might also be explained by the model of ritualized behavior suggested by Boyer and Lié nard [9,28,39,40]. Ritualized movements might have functioned to overload working memory, thus suppressing intrusive thoughts about the threat of public speaking [41].…”

Functional Perspectives on Emotion, Behavior, and Cognition

“…They present evidence that emotional processes likely play a role in tasks that measure executive functioning. Keren, Boyer, Mort and Eilam [ 9 ] also focused on a commonly encountered adaptational challenge in the need to identify and address threats. They present evidence that idiosyncratic behaviors function to reduce anxiety in threatening environments.…”

Examining memory for ritualized gesture in complex causal sequences

“…Ritualized gestures, particularly in cultural and community rituals, are regarded as costly, requiring expenditure that seems disproportionate to the ostensible outcomes of the act (Henrich, 2009;Ruffle & Sosis, 2007Sosis & Bressler, 2003). The same is true at smaller scales, when an ordinary and instrumental sequence contains degrees of redundancy (as in recipes, or procedures for making an artefact, particularly when such procedures are important or hazardous; Keren et al, 2013). It is important to note that we use the term 'costly' to refer to the inefficiency of ritualized gesture with regard to the additional cognitive load required to remember and reproduce something instrumentally unnecessary (Rybanska, McKay, Jong, & Whitehouse, 2017) -it is not an equivocation between the physical, emotional, financial, and/or opportunity cost associated with participation in large communal rituals.…”

“…Ritualistic actions may become embedded, or maintained, within instrumental sequences fairly often (Cohen & Bacdayan, 1994;Keren, Boyer, Mort, & Eilam, 2013). What are the consequences of this?…”