by Michael Norton studied psychology and was a fellow at the MIT Media Lab before becoming a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Known for his research on behavioral economics and well-being, Norton published his first book, Happy Money: The New Science of Spend Smarterby Elizabeth Dunn, in 2013. More recently, The Ritual Effect: The Transformative Power of Our Everyday Actionsout on April 18, Norton spent more than a decade surveying thousands of people about the role of ritual in their lives.
Rituals seem to be a complex subject for scientific study. How do you categorize them and measure their effect?
It felt very scary at first, because you can’t just randomly assign people to families and ask them to do different rituals, then follow up in 12 years. At first I was going to study obvious things like weddings and funerals, but when we surveyed people, we found out that all the other things they did up – in their families, with a significant other, with people working. That opened it up a lot. We could look at these kinds of rituals and see when people do them. We could gauge their feelings, we could really get a feel for what these things are doing in our lives.
My favorite romantic ritual is a couple clinking forks three times before eating. Audiences always give that ‘Aaaaw’
So what are they doing? What is the “ritual effect”, as you call it?
One of the things rituals do is help us unlock emotions that might otherwise be difficult to unlock. You can be surprised if you go to the Grand Canyon, for example, but it is difficult to go there every day. And so we use these rituals to help us feel in different ways. We use them to cope with sadness, to lift ourselves up, to calm ourselves, or whatever we need in the moment.
Is that what distinguishes rituals from customs – the emotional component?
That’s a big part of it. We describe habits as the “what”, as the thing you’re doing, but it’s the rituals you’re building around it. Do a mundane act like tying your shoes. It’s boring, and yet when a tennis player does it a certain way, they feel like they can go out and play at Wimbledon. So rituals give emotion and meaning.
You write that rituals can strengthen or even create a sense of identity.
Think of families at dinner. At a very basic level, they are putting calories in their face. But when families eat a cake made by their great-grandmother, it’s a connection to the past and a sense of “who we are as a family”.
Do you think that there is something deep in the human brain that attracts us to rituals?
There is some neuroscience to this, but from my point of view as a behavioral scientist there are few things that people use in every situation, in response to different problems, and one of them is rituals. I think it suggests that there is something inside of us that turns to ritual. Go back thousands of years and you can find evidence that we were doing them there too – ceremonial burials, for example.
Why do so many great athletes and musicians rely on rituals before they perform?
This is one of the most fun things to study. Research shows that as things get more stressful, we are more likely to behave in ritualistic ways. I have stress in my life, but Beyoncé doesn’t seem stressed, and I’d look really weird if I taught her elaborate pre-class rituals. Culturally, we allow people who are doing very stressful things to do elaborate rituals without really judging them. Research shows that they also help us be a little less reactive to our mistakes during performance.
From your research, how important are rituals in romantic relationships?
Sometimes people ask: “What’s your favorite ritual you’ve ever come across?” And there are many, but my favorite is this couple who said they clink their forks three times before eating. If I say that to an audience, there’s an instant “Awwww“. We see in our research that rituals are a sign of commitment (we don’t fully know if couples who already love each other are more likely to engage in rituals – the causal arrows are hard to tease apart). You can get married and sign papers to show that you’re committed, but day by day it’s these little actions that we’ve been doing for years that indicate “we’re here, here we are, we’re going to keep. to do this”. And when a couple stops clinking forks, it is often very upset.
When history, culture and tradition come into play, even minor differences can become a point of contention
What about rituals in family relationships?
Families who report having rituals around holidays are more likely to say they feel close to each other, and are more likely to get together for those holidays. So there is a cement function that pulls us back. Like couples, we don’t know if families that love each other are more likely to develop, but there is something there.
Rituals are not always beneficial, they can be harmful at both individual and societal levels.
On an individual level, being interrupted by a fire can really consume us. And as rituals become too central, they can start to get in the way. And that’s where we see issues like obsessive compulsive disorder, where the goal is the ritual itself. Instead of checking that the door is locked so you can get on with your day, the goal is to check and you’re not doing what you were supposed to be doing.
At the societal level, rituals can divide and unify.
I taught a class the other day, and I often do this thing where everyone stands up and does a composed ritual of clapping, and it’s really fun, but if someone claps at the wrong time, people look very crazy. If that happens with composed rituals, you can see that on a broader level, when history and culture and tradition come into play, even minor differences can become points of contention.
What do you hope people will get from the book?
I really love it when people notice what they are already doing. It’s almost like you laugh at yourself a little bit, but from then on, when you do it, it has a different resonance because you owned it – it’s for rituals. And I want to encourage people to try it. If you don’t have a ritual before your stressful presentation, try something. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s fine, but I like the idea that there are these tools that we can try and see if they can help us.
