Sci has to say she’d have LOVED to take the data for this study. Get to go to Spain, hang out, put some heart monitors on people and watch some fire walking…sounds like a good time. Much more glamorous than my own daily life in the lab. Can I get a little glamour around here? The spiffy starched lab coat just isn’t doing it.
Anyway, while this paper involved fire walking, what it’s actually about is the idea of collective rituals, and how they affect the people involved in them. When most people think of collective rituals, they often think of ancient tribes dancing in a circle or something else exotic. But in fact, modern societies engage in just as many collective rituals as we did back when we were all hunter gatherers.
Like that.
(hey, y’all put it on Youtube… and why are all of these in weddings?)
Or that. Collective rituals are things that we do together, whether it’s choreographed dance moves or experiencing a sport. Collective rituals are found in every single society on the planet, and anthropologists think that they are used to foster social assimilation and reinforce a feeling of belonging to the group. The obvious ones that come to mind are things like marching in step, singing, chanting, dancing…and you know, walking on hot coals together.
What? You don’t think that makes you feel closer to people?
Konvalinka et al. “Synchronized arousal between performers and related spectators in a fire-walking ritual” PNAS, 2011
But the question is: do you have to PARTICIPATE in the ritual to get the social benefits and feeling of belonging? Or can you just WATCH? I think that anyone who’s witnessed a sports team win in the presence of devoted fans will say that you can get a lot out of watching, but this hasn’t really been tested.
Bring in the fire walkers.
The authors of this study wanted to look at not just those who were participating vs those who were watching, but also wanted to look at how the relatedness of the watchers changed their experiences as they saw a participant. And they wanted to look at, not emotional feelings, but PHYSICAL effects. In this case, heart rate.
So they went to the village of San Pedro Manrique in Spain, a teeny village of about 600 which sports a yearly fire walking ritual.
(Source)
Every year in summer, the town goes to their specially built amphitheatre, and lights a ton of wood. In fact, TWO TONS of wood. Oak wood. They let it burn good for 4 hours, until the heap is reduced to a 7 m long, 677 degree Celsius pile of hot coals. Then the fire walkers and spectators go in procession to the amphitheater, the fire walkers pick to goes first, and one by one, they walk across in bare feet, often carrying a friend or family member (like a spouse or relative) on their BACKS.
(This one’s from Greece, but the idea is similar)
I’m impressed.
So one year, the anthropologists went to this village, and said “hey, while you’re walking over those coals/watching your son walk over those coals/watching the dudes you don’t know walk over those coals, would you mind wearing a heart monitor?” They recorded the heart rates of the fire walkers, their relatives (who weren’t being carried, mind), and the tourists that had just come in to see the show. They then compared the heart rates of the three groups.
Not surprisingly, you can see that the firewalkers up there showed the biggest leaps in heart rate. Wouldn’t you? But what you can also see is that their loved ones did as well, and in fact displayed levels almost as high as the firewalkers. But the spectators who didn’t know anyone…well they might as well have been chillin’ out and eating Cheetos.
So the fire walkers showed the most physiological arousal, and their loved ones showed a similar rate. Previous studies have shown that similar physical activities (from dance to heart rate) can lead to increased rapport between people, so the authors assume that the fire walkers and the relatives were feeling pretty close knit right about then. Of course, there are possibly confounds of the relatives maybe holding their breaths in panic or praying furiously, but overall, it looks like the observers must share a MEMBERSHIP in the group (via being related to the firewalkers) to really experience the physicality of the ritual.
I think…this is a little obvious. I mean, of COURSE your mom is going to be holding her breath in panic as you walk across the hot coals. Of COURSE your wife is going to be nervous! Perhaps this hasn’t been investigated using heart rate, but still. What I’M curious about is how much the physiological arousal would correlate with a feeling of membership. When people are doing the firewalking, do they feel more strongly about their families? Do they feel more strongly about their village as a whole and are their feelings more positive? What about the non-related spectators? Sure they didn’t have the big peaks in heart rate, but could you correlate those who HAD higher heart rates with their feelings of belonging? I feel like they could have maybe given out a questionnaire, asking how they felt about the village, say did they think it was nice, did they think the PEOPLE there were welcoming, etc, etc, to see how much seeing the ritual made them identify with the group, and whether that sense of identifying and feeling like a member correlated with their heart rate. Perhaps you don’t even need to go to Spain to do this study, put some heart monitors on some people watching a championship game at a stadium, put heart monitors on the players (for close relatedness you could look at their family members as well), and then truck in some non-fans to watch with heart monitors. Then see how everyone felt about the game and the team afterward. Did people feel like they identified more? Do non-fans feel more like fans (on a scale of 1-10 or something) after participating in the stadium with the die-hards? I bet they do, and I wonder if it’s related to how much physical arousal they felt during the game. Anyone up to do this study?
Konvalinka, I., Xygalatas, D., Bulbulia, J., Schjodt, U., Jegindo, E., Wallot, S., Van Orden, G., & Roepstorff, A. (2011). Synchronized arousal between performers and related spectators in a fire-walking ritual Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (20), 8514-8519 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1016955108
