McCauley Honorary | Dimitris Xygalatas "Ritual, Embodiment, and Emotional Contagion"

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Dimitris Xygalatas | Anthropology, University of Connecticut
"Ritual, Embodiment, and Emotional Contagion"

While the Cognitive Science of Religion has brought the mind to the forefront of analysis, it has had little to say about the body. As a result, the mechanisms underlying much-discussed and well-documented effects often remain elusive. In this paper, I will discuss ritual’s ability to facilitate the alignment of people’s bodies, actions, and emotions by presenting findings from an interdisciplinary research program that combines laboratory and field methods and discussing the implications of such findings for ritual’s role in promoting social coordination and group cohesion.