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.

Centre for Applied Cross Cultural Research and School of Psychology Victoria University Wellington Wellington New Zealand ; LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Cognitive Systems Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Technical University of Denmark Kgs Lyngby Denmark ; Department of Cognitive Science Central European University Budapest Hungary

Interactive Minds Centre Department of Culture and Society Aarhus Aarhus University Aarhus Denmark ; Center for Advanced Hindsight Social Science Research Institute Duke University Durham North Carolina United States of America ; Interdisciplinary Centre for Organizational Architecture School of Business and Social Sciences Aarhus University Aarhus Denmark

LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies Victoria University Wellington Wellington New Zealand

LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic ; Interactive Minds Centre Department of Culture and Society Aarhus Aarhus University Aarhus Denmark

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