Michael Norton

They will gather and they will

mourn publicly in order to grieve the elephant that's gone.

Other people say that's just an instinct.

It gets to be kind of a discussion and a debate.

But it does seem that humans are the most likely to use them across the most contexts.

As is very often the case, we're very, very creative and innovative.

So we'll take a tool and then use that tool not just for the original purpose, but for all sorts of purposes.

That's right.

And I think that that also points to the fact that it isn't just that rituals are good.

So I wish I could say, add 50 rituals to your life and you'll be happy from now on.

That really isn't the function that rituals serve.

When you ask athletes, for example, about their rituals, they do say, you know what, when I do it, I feel like I'm ready to go or I feel like I'm in the zone.

I feel like I can get done what I needed to get done.

However, if they can't do the ritual, if something interrupts them or they don't have time, well, now they're in a worse off state.

In fact, they might've been better off to not have a ritual at all because now if they can't complete their ritual, they feel off.

They feel not ready to go.

They feel like they can't do the thing that they're supposed to do.

So when we have rituals, they have a lot of meaning and emotion built into them.

And if we do them the way we wanted to do them, they can be very positive.

But they also have this risk where if we can't enact them the way we had hoped, they can, in fact, have negative consequences.