Mike Carruthers

In fact, religions are full of rituals.

Graduation day?

Ritual.

Weddings, funerals, ritual, ritual.

And there's more.

Many of us have daily rituals we perform.

Humans seem to like rituals.

Maybe we need them.

What role and function do rituals serve?

Should we have more rituals?

Well, that's what Michael Norton is here to discuss.

Michael is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and he is author of the book, The Ritual Effect.

Hi, Michael.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

So I'm curious, first of all, you're a professor of business administration and you wrote a book about rituals.

So bridge that gap for me.

Are rituals solving problems or are they just a comfortable kind of guardrail?

Those elaborate rituals that you sometimes see athletes do before they play a game or run a race or serve a ball, why is it that it seems athletes have these rituals?

And many athletes don't have rituals, at least that we can see, but some have really elaborate ones.

So why is that?