IS RITUAL BEHAVIOR A RESPONSE TO ANXIETY?

Abstract

There are costs and benefits to both laboratory and field experiments. Ideally, we should strive for the combination of both approaches, moving back and forth between the field and the lab. Only under such methodological collaboration can we be sure that our laboratory simulations represent the real world and our real-world studies are not confounded by unobserved factors. As this chapter hopes to illustrate, we live in exciting times when new methodologies and technologies can help us answer old questions and test classical theories in our disciplines, such as the one by Bronislaw Malinowski (1948/1992). Here, we describe our operationalization of Malinowski's hypothesis that rituals occur in the time of uncertainty and present results of our laboratory experiment.