Rituals are able to transform ordinary objects into extraordinary objects. And while rituals typically do not cause physical changes, they may imbue objects with a particular specialness – a simple gold band may become a wedding ring, while an ordinary dessert may become a birthday cake. To treat such objects as if they were ordinary then becomes inappropriate. How does this transformation take place in the minds of observers, and how do we recognize it when we see it? Here, we suggest that two under-examined elements of ritual need deeper consideration within the context of ritual cognition. We propose a fully integrated operational definition in which these two critical ritual elements – causal opacity and goal demotion – are included. In a pre-registered experiment one-hundred and one adults, in a 2 × 2 mixed-within participants design observed actions performed upon profane objects. These actions were either ordinary (causally transparent and goal apparent) or ritualized (causally opaque and goal demoted), and were described as a blessing, a curse, or were not described at all. Contrary to established findings and pre-registered predictions, we found that ritualized actions alone are not enough to influence perceptions of, and attributions towards, objects, and that positive goal information (blessings) are more behaviorally persuasive than negative information. However, we found that participants recalled ritualized action in greater detail and with more specificity than ordinary actions. In effect, we demonstrate that causal opacity and goal information interact to allow us to recognize a ritual as a ritual.

仪式能够将普通物体转换为非凡物体。尽管仪式通常不会引起身体变化，但它们可能会使物体具有特定的特色-简单的金戒指可能会成为结婚戒指，而普通的甜点可能会成为生日蛋糕。将此类对象视为普通对象变得不合适。在观察者的脑海中，这种转变是如何发生的？当我们看到它时，我们如何认识到它？在这里，我们建议在礼节认知的背景下，需要对礼节的两个未经充分审查的要素进行更深层次的考虑。我们提出了一个完全集成的运营定义，其中包括了这两个关键的礼节要素-因果不透明和目标降级。在一个预先注册的实验中，一百零一个成年人 在2×2混合参与者中，设计观察对象对亵渎对象执行的动作。这些行为要么是普通的（因果关系透明，目标明确），要么是有礼节的（因果不透明，目标被贬低），被描述为祝福，诅咒或根本没有描述。与既定的发现和预先登记的预测相反，我们发现仅进行仪式化的动作不足以影响对物体的感知和归因，而且积极的目标信息（祝福）比消极的信息更具行为说服力。但是，我们发现参与者比常规行为更详细，更具体地回顾了仪式化行为。实际上，我们证明了因果不透明和目标信息相互影响，使我们能够将一种仪式识别为一种仪式。