Mask

Culturally transmitted ritualized behavior seems to capture people’s attention by mimicking the circumstances of potential threat detection. Such effects of “cognitive capture” are common in human cultures. For instance, people the world over are fascinated by masks because these man-made objects mimic the input conditions of our face-recognition systems.

This suggests that, in order to find ritualized actions compelling, people do not need to be persuaded of the “meaning” conveyed (if any), or be mindful of the social effects of coordinated ceremonies. An action script that does engage our threat-detection systems, or engages them more acutely, is simply more attention-grabbing than one that does not or does it less, and is therefore more likely to be transmitted, thereby becoming a cultural ceremony. Note that this does not in any way imply that people actually think that there they are real persons. All that is required is that the relevant cognitive system is activated, which makes the action is question worthy of attention. Over long-term cultural transmission, this would result is apparently compelling, highly prescribed sequences of non-pragmatic actions that often constitute the core of what we call “rituals”. ~ Page 69