Ritualization reduces anxiety
Martin Lang and Radim Chvaja published a chapter discussing the relationship between ritual and anxiety in The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion.
Why do people perform rituals?
While researchers often try to answer the question of ritual participation from an outside (etic) point of view, the inside (emic) perspective is no less important. Dimitris Xygalatas together with Peter Maňo investigated the local understanding of various rituals performed by Mauritian Hindus.
Though the results lend support to an old anthropological observation that rituals are performed because "it has always been done that way", it seems that more demanding rituals trigger a wider spectrum of emic explanations. These explanations often relate to pressing and specific concerns and needs of performers.
You can find the paper here:
