Estimated costs and benefits of participation in an extreme ritual in Mauritius

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14210%2F25%3A00144488" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14210/25:00144488 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2025.10017" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2025.10017</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2025.10017" target="_blank" >10.1017/ehs.2025.10017</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Estimated costs and benefits of participation in an extreme ritual in Mauritius

Original language description

Humans often participate in physically harmful and demanding rituals with no apparent material benefits. Although such behaviours have traditionally been explained using the lens of costly signalling theory, we question whether the canonical theory can be applied to the case of human cooperative signals and introduce a modification of this theory based on differential benefit estimation. We propose that along with cooperative benefits, committed members also believe in supernaturally induced benefits, which motivate participation in extreme rituals and stabilize their effects on cooperative assortment. Using Thaipusam Kavadi as a prototypical costly ritual, Tamil (ingroup) and Christian (outgroup) participants in Mauritius (N = 369) assessed the cost and benefits of Kavadi participation or hiking. We found that ingroup participants estimated material costs as larger than outgroups, physical costs as lower, and benefits as larger. These findings suggest that estimated costs may vary by modality and cultural expectations (e.g. Kavadi participants are not supposed to display pain), while supernaturally induced benefits were consistently reported as larger by ingroups compared to outgroups. We conclude that differential estimation of ritual benefits, not costs, are key to the persistence of extreme rituals and their function in the assortment of committed members, underscoring the role of differential estimation in the cognitive computation of signal utility.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

50902 - Social sciences, interdisciplinary

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA23-05655S" target="_blank" >GA23-05655S: Signaler psychology: Investigating computations underlying human cooperative communication</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Evolutionary Human Sciences

ISSN

2513-843X

e-ISSN

2513-843X

Volume of the periodical

7

Issue of the periodical within the volume

e29

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

17

Pages from-to

1-17

UT code for WoS article

001589486200001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-105014099939