Magic of Rituals – Nerves Calming and Boost Performance

Posted on January 26, 2017

Photo: flickr

Anxiety can be quickly generated with events such as a tough interview or critical match surfacing in daily lives. These might lead to one sabotaging hopes and fulfilling own fears. There are many ways that are used to drive such fears away, from mediating to enjoying a cigarette. However, a recent research published in Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes: The Power of Ritual – seem to be a new tactic to tackle.


Ritual has proven to calm participants down just before a stressful event and they didn’t just feel better; they performed better as well. Ritual, known to be an effective method for reducing anxiety probably due to the chance to express oneself emotionally.

The definition of ritual used by the author, Brooks, – fixed routines with symbolic significance – doesn’t require any self-expression. And a neutral procedure – writing down a fixed sequence of numbers – turned out to work just as well in improving performance.

There have been small studies on “pre-performance routines” been published in the past but the sole focus included functional practices, such as stretches and concentration exercises. This new work shows specific benefits owing to ritual: the millennia-old cultural practice used to cope with the hunt, birth, and death.

Brooks wrapped up by adding that “some may dismiss rituals as irrational, those who enact rituals may well outperform the skeptics who forgo them.”


To read the full article, please click on link below.


Category(s):Anxiety

Source material from British Psychological Society