Bringing Ritual to Mind

Download or read book Bringing Ritual to Mind written by Robert N. McCauley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing Ritual to Mind explores the psychological foundations of religious ritual systems. Participants must recall their rituals well enough to ensure a sense of continuity across performances, and those rituals must motivate them to transmit and re-perform them. Most religious rituals the world over exploit either high performance frequency or extraordinary emotional stimulation (but not both) to enhance their recollection (literacy does not affect this). McCauley and Lawson argue that participants' cognitive representations of ritual form explain why. Reviewing a wide range of evidence, they explain religions' evolution.