Mapping the minds of spectators during an extreme ritual: a network perspective

ABSTRACT

We study the mental maps of spectators using psychological network models during a large naturally occurring extreme ritual. Our aim was to identify the psychometric network structure of psychological reactions to an extreme ritual, and to investigate the core features of ritual cognition among its spectators. Participants who observed the Nine Emperor God (or Vegetarian) Festival (N = 1041 Taoist-Buddhists) completed measures of social, affective, behavioral and uncertainty cognitions. Applying undirected psychometric network models, we found that: 1) cognitions clustered in a small set of communities, and were 2) organized along two major dimensions (positive . negative valence, uncertainty beliefs ‘vs.’ uncertainty management). We argue that our study is an important step in theory building efforts, and that our findings offer insights for integrating theories of ritual. Thus, our study points towards new directions for theories of ritual by mapping the interdependence of psychological reactions and identifying the core cognition of a ritual.

KEYWORDS:

• authenticity
• awe
• dysphoria
• need for closure
• network
• perceived signals
• ritual
• social bonding

Supplementary material

The supplement contains a description of the history and structure of the ritual, ethnographic descriptions of key events during the ritual, an exploration of key theories and how these theories may relate to the variables measured in our study, detailed information on the validation of the measured variables in the study context and statistical information on the network analysis and network properties.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dimitris Xygalatas, Rita McNamara, Cristine Legare, Joseph Bulbulia and the Shrine authorities, especially at Kathu and ShuiTui Shrine for their support, helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

RF conceived and designed the study, wrote the manuscript, analysed the data. RF, PT and KS prepared the material, reviewed the design, collected the data. JK provided theoretical input and statistical expertise for data analysis and edited manuscript drafts. All authors have read and agreed to the final version of this manuscript.

Financial support

This study was supported by a Marie-Curie Cofund Senior Fellowship to RF while resident at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus, Denmark and by a grant to RF from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development [CNPq –310336/2019-8] during the writing and analyses stages.

Publishing ethics

This manuscript is our own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work; all listed authors know of and agree to the manuscript being submitted to the journal; and the manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, fraudulent, illegal, libelous, or obscene.

Ethical standards

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. Ethical approval for the study protocol was obtained from the School of Psychology Human Ethics Committee under delegated authority of Victoria University of Wellington’s Human Ethics Committee (#0000020925). Institutional Review Boards in Thailand responsible for evaluating social science and humanities research were only introduced in 2017, two years after this study was completed. At the time of planning our study, we sought ethical approval but because our research was not of a medical nature and no intervention was implemented, it was not considered. To assure that we complied with the local ethical norms, we presented all study material to the relevant shrine authorities in Kathu, Phuket town and HatYai. The shrine committees examined our study protocol and agreed for us to approach participants during the festival.

Research transparency and reproducibility

All data, materials and scripts are available on the OSF: https://osf.io/wyzbm.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CNPQ: [Grant Number 310336/2019-8; Protocol number: 8700801874122510]; Marie Curie Co-Fund: [Grant Number 754513].