Children will comprehensively copy others' actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectiveness. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that children will overimitate in this way even when the arbitrary actions copied are used as part of a process to achieve an outcome for someone else. We subsequently show in Experiment 2 that children will omit arbitrary actions, but only if the actions are to achieve a clear, functional goal for a naïve adult. These findings highlight how readily children adopt what appear to be conventional behaviors, even when faced with a clear demonstration of their negligible functional value. We show how a child's strong, early-emerging propensity for overimitation reveals a sensitivity for ritualistic behavior.

Rituals are a pervasive and ubiquitous aspect of human culture, but when we naïvely observe an opaque set of ritual actions, how do we come to understand its significance? To investigate this, across two experiments we manipulated the degree to which actions were ritualistic or ordinary, and whether or not they were accompanied with context. In Experiment 1, 474 adult participants were presented with videos of novel rituals (causally opaque actions) or control actions (causally transparent) performed on a set of objects accompanied with neutral-valance written context. Experiment 2 presented the same video stimuli but with negative and aversive written context. In both experiments ritualized objects were rated as physically unchanged, but more 'special' and more 'desirable' than objects subjected to control actions, with context amplifying this effect. Results are discussed with reference to the Ritual Stance and the Social-Action hypothesis. Implications for both theories are discussed, as are methodological concerns regarding the empirical investigation of ritual cognition. We argue that causally opaque ritual actions guide the behavior of naïve viewers because such actions are perceived as socially normative, rather than with reference to supernatural intervention or causation.

Rituals are a ubiquitous feature of human behavior, yet we know little about the cognitive mechanisms that enable children to recognize them and respond accordingly. In this study, 3 to 6 year old children living in Bushman communities in South Africa were shown a sequence of causally irrelevant actions that differed in the extent to which goal demotion was a feature. The children consistently replicated the causally irrelevant actions but when such actions were also fully goal demoted they were reproduced at significantly higher rates. These findings highlight how causal opacity and goal demotion work in tandem to demarcate actions as being ritualistic, and specifically, how goal demotion uniquely influences the reproduction of ritualistic actions.

Rituals tend to be both causally opaque and goal-demoted, yet these two qualities are rarely dissociated in the literature. Here we manipulate both factors and demonstrate their unique influence on ritual cognition. In a 2 x 3 (Action-Type x Goal-Information) between subjects design 484 US adults viewed Causally Opaque (Ritual) or Causally Transparent (Ordinary) actions performed on identical objects. They were provided with no goal information, positive goal information ('Blessing') or negative goal information ('Cursing'). Neither causal opacity nor goal information influenced perceptions of physical change/causation. In contrast, causal opacity increased attributions of 'specialness', whereas goal-information did not. Finally, goal-information interacted with action-type on measures of preference, such that ordinary actions are influenced by both 'blessings' and 'curses', but ritual actions are only influenced by 'curses'. These findings are interpreted in light of the Ritual Stance, and the cognitive bases of the effects are described with reference to Boyer and Liénard's Precaution theory of ritualized behavior. The combined value of these two theories is discussed, and extended to a causal model of developmental ritual 'calibration'.

Previous research has demonstrated an efficiency bias in social learning whereby young children preferentially imitate the functional actions of a successful individual over an unsuccessful group member. Our aim in the current research was to examine whether this bias remains when actions are presented as conventional rather than instrumental. Preschool children watched videos of an individual and a group member. The individual always demonstrated a successful instrumental action and the group member an unsuccessful action that was either causally transparent or opaque. Highlighting the selective nature of social learning, children copied the group at higher rates when the demonstrated actions were causally opaque than when they were causally transparent. This research draws attention to the influence of conventional/ritual-like actions on young children's learning choices and emphasizes the role of this orientation in the development of human-specific cumulative culture.