The Fire-Walker’s High: Affect and Physiological Responses in an Extreme Collective Ritual

Ronald Fischer,Joseph Bulbulia,Panagiotis Mitkidis,Penny Tok,Paul Reddish,Ivana Konvalinka,Dimitris Xygalatas,Brock Bastian

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088355

Abstract

How do people feel during extreme collective rituals? Despite longstanding speculation, few studies have attempted to quantify ritual experiences. Using a novel pre/post design, we quantified physiological fluctuations (heart rates) and self-reported affective states from a collective fire-walking ritual in a Mauritian Hindu community. Specifically, we compared changes in levels of happiness, fatigue, and heart rate reactivity among high-ordeal participants (fire-walkers), low-ordeal participants (non-fire-walking participants with familial bonds to fire-walkers) and spectators (unrelated/unknown to the fire-walkers). We observed that fire-walkers experienced the highest increase in heart rate and reported greater happiness post-ritual compared to low-ordeal participants and spectators. Low-ordeal participants reported increased fatigue after the ritual compared to both fire-walkers and spectators, suggesting empathetic identification effects. Thus, witnessing the ritualistic suffering of loved ones may be more exhausting than experiencing suffering oneself. The findings demonstrate that the level of ritual involvement is important for shaping affective responses to collective rituals. Enduring a ritual ordeal is associated with greater happiness, whereas observing a loved-one endure a ritual ordeal is associated with greater fatigue post-ritual.

Highlights

Extreme collective rituals have fascinated observers for centuries
We investigated self-reports on affective states of performers and spectators in a naturally occurring extreme ritual – quantifying emotional states that would be very difficult to simulate in controlled laboratory settings
Our study provides the first quantitative test of self-reported affective reactions to extreme rituals in a field setting

Summary

Introduction

Extreme collective rituals have fascinated observers for centuries. Communities worldwide engage in costly and dangerous activities such as body-piercing, flagellation, and fire-walking. Such rituals are not outliers that exist in only a few communities, but are practiced by millions of people around the world. Social scientists have long speculated that participating in extreme collective rituals leads to a state of collective effervescence [1], a shared emotional experience that binds communities together. Haidt [2,3] argued that one way for individuals to experience intense happiness is to lose themselves in collective rituals, emphasizing the positive affective aspects of these events. Other cognitive and evolutionary theorists hypothesize that rituals may invoke both positive and negative affective states, with the latter being powerful in eliciting in-group cohesion and coordination, especially in traditional societies [4,5,6,7] (for empirical tests see [8,9])

Methods

Results

Conclusion