Michael Norton studied psychology and worked as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab before becoming a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Norton, known for his research on behavioral economics and well-being, published his first book: Happy Money: The New Science Spending SmarterWith Elizabeth Dunn in 2013. For the last one, The Ritual Effect: The Transformative Power of Our Daily ActionsOn April 18, Norton surveyed thousands of people over more than a decade about the role of ritual in their lives.
Rituals seem to be a difficult subject for scientific study. How do you classify them and measure their impact?
It seemed very scary at first because you can’t randomly assign people to families, have them do different rituals, and then follow up 12 years later. At first I was going to look at obvious things like weddings and funerals, but when we researched people, we found that there were all these things they made up with their families, with their lovers, with people at work. This made him very hungry. We can look at such rituals and see when people do them. We can measure their emotions, we can really begin to understand what these things are doing in our lives.
My favorite romantic ritual involves a couple clinking their forks three times before eating. Viewers always say ‘Aww’ to this
So what are they doing? What is the “ritual effect” as you call it?
One of the things rituals do is help us unlock emotions that might otherwise be difficult to unlock. For example, if you go to the Grand Canyon, you may be amazed or curious, but it is difficult to go there every day. And we use these rituals to help us feel in different ways. We use them to cope with grief, strengthen ourselves, calm down, or whatever else we need in the moment.
Is this what distinguishes rituals from habits, the emotional component?
That’s a big part of it. We define habits as “what”, what you do; whereas rituals are things you build around it. Do a simple action like tying your shoes. It’s boring, but yet when a tennis player does it a certain way, he feels like he can go out and play at Wimbledon. So rituals bring emotion and meaning.
You write that rituals can also strengthen or even create a sense of identity.
Think about families at dinner. At the most basic level, they’re throwing calories in their face. But when families eat cake made by their great-grandmother, it is a connection to the past and a sense of “who we are as a family.”
Do you think there is something deep within the human brain that draws us to ritual?
There is some neuroscience on this topic, but from my perspective as a behavioral scientist, there are very few things that people use in all situations, in response to a variety of problems, and ritual is one of them. I think this shows that there is something within us that becomes a ritual. If you go back thousands of years, you can find evidence that we were doing these things back then too; for example, ritualistic funerals.
Why do so many top athletes and musicians rely on rituals before performing?
This is one of the most fun things to work on. There is research showing that as things become more stressful, we are more likely to behave in ritualistic ways. I have stress in my life, but not like Beyoncé has stress, and I would look very weird if I went through her elaborate rituals before teaching a class. Culturally, we allow people who do very stressful things to go through elaborate rituals without really judging them. Research shows that they also help us be a little less reactive to our mistakes during performance.
According to your research, how important are rituals in romantic relationships?
Sometimes people ask: “What’s your favorite ritual you’ve ever encountered?” And there are many, but my favorite is this couple who say they clink their forks three times before eating. When I say this to an audience, there’s an immediate “Ahhh”. In our research, we find that rituals serve as a signal of commitment (we don’t know exactly whether couples who already love each other are more likely to engage in rituals; it’s hard to separate the causal arrows). You can get married and sign papers to show you’re committed, but these small actions we’ve been doing over the years signal “we’re in this, this is who we are, we’ll keep going.” I am doing this”. And when couples stop clinking forks, it’s often very sad.
When history, culture and tradition come into play, even small differences can become a real point of contention
What about rituals in family relationships?
Families who report performing rituals during the holidays say they feel closer to each other and are more likely to get together during those holidays. So there is a strengthening function that pulls us back. As with couples, we don’t know if families who love each other are more likely to develop rituals, but there’s something here.
Rituals are not always helpful; It can be damaging on both individual and societal levels.
On an individual level, if a ritual is interrupted, it can truly devastate us. As rituals become too centralized, they can begin to interfere. And this is where we see problems like obsessive compulsive disorder, where the ritual itself becomes the target. Instead of checking to see if the door is locked so you can go about your day, the check itself becomes the goal and you end up not doing what you need to do.
At the social level, rituals can both divide and unite.
I taught a class the other day and I often do something where I have everyone perform a made-up ritual that involves standing up and clapping, and it’s great fun, but people seem really annoyed if someone claps at the wrong time. If this happens through a made-up ritual, you can see how even small differences can become a real point of contention when history, culture and tradition come into play on a broader level.
What do you hope people take away from the book?
I really like when people notice the things they are already doing. It’s like you’re laughing at yourself a little bit, but from then on, when you do it, it has a different resonance because you own it; your ritual. And I want to encourage people to try it. If you don’t have a ritual before your big stressful presentation, try something. It’s okay if it doesn’t work for you, but I like the idea of having these tools that we can try and see if they can help us.