Original title: Model similarity cues cultural selection of ritualized actions
Researchers asked adults to choose between foods prepared with different action sequences. Some sequences had an obvious practical purpose; others were hard to connect to the result, making them ritualized. Participants watched a partner whose similarity or prestige was varied, then chose privately or publicly. In public, they more often chose the ritualized option when a similar partner had chosen it; prestige did not reliably increase choices of practical options.
Imagine choosing how to prepare a snack after watching someone else. It is hard to know whether an unusual set of steps matters, especially when you cannot see why they would change the food. In this paper, the snack is the food choice, the steps are the ritual or practical actions, and the person you watched is the partner whose similarity or prestige might affect what you copy.
Rituals can spread through groups even when people cannot see how they work. This experiment suggests that, in public, a person’s similarity to us may matter more than their prestige when we decide whether to copy a ritual.
The abstract reports one preregistered experiment with adult participants and a food-choice task. It does not establish that similarity drives ritual adoption in other settings or groups, or explain why prestige did not reliably increase choices of practical actions. The authors call for further work on similarity and prestige judgments in cultural evolution.
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Model similarity cues cultural selection of ritualized actions — Robert Jagiello, Harvey Whitehouse — Religion Brain & Behavior — doi:10.1080/2153599x.2026.2721297
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.