Performing meaningless rituals boosts our self-control through making us feel more self-disciplined

The ritual instructions given to some of the participants in the first experiment, via Tian et al 2018 By guest blogger Tomasz Witkowski We could say without exaggeration that the discovery of a means of achieving full control over oneself is something of a “holy grail” for psychology. There is nothing to indicate that we are getting any closer to finding one, but recent decades have brought us a growing number of discoveries that at least partially allow us to enhance self-control mechanisms. One of them is the light which has been shed on the importance of rituals in boosting self-control. Now in a new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Allen Ding Tian and his collaborators have examined whether enacting rituals (defined as “a fixed episodic sequence of actions characterised by rigidity and repetition”) can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioural self-control.  The researchers planned and carried out six interesting experiments. For the first they recruited 93 undergraduate women at a gym who had a goal of losing weight. All participants received the same instructions to try to reduce their calorie intake over a 5-day period, but half were told to be “mindful” about their food consumption, whereas the other half were taught a three-step pre-eating ritual to remind them to reduce calorie intake. Before every meal they had to cut their food into pieces before consuming it....
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: guest blogger Health Source Type: blogs