Kurt Nelson  0:00  
Kurt, welcome to behavioral grooves, the show where we talk about behavioral science in a very fun way that talks about things that matter to you, like, how do you gather for holidays and what are the rituals that you have? So join me, Kurt Nelson, along with my co host Tim Houlihan, as we do a very special grooving session for you on gatherings and rituals. I'm glad

Tim Houlihan  0:31  
you didn't go to how to survive, you know, Thanksgiving, or how to not kill Uncle Joe at Christmas. You know,

Kurt Nelson  0:40  
we already did that. One didn't. We didn't. We did done that. Yeah, it

Tim Houlihan  0:44  
never gets old, because crazy uncle Joe every

Kurt Nelson  0:47  
year so and it's always uncles. It's never, never crazy aunts. It's always a crazy uncles,

Tim Houlihan  0:52  
isn't it? Yeah? Okay, so how do you want

Kurt Nelson  0:57  
to frame this? So we are, we are entering into holiday season for, you know, Thanksgiving, friends giving, for those who do that, right, Christmas, Hanukkah, end of Year celebrations. We just passed Halloween, one of my favorite, you know, celebrations of the year. And you know, there's an aspect of these where we gather together and that we have rituals with that and that they're important. And wanted to just dig into understanding why, from a psychological perspective, why are gathering so important for us? Why are rituals that we have in these and what that does for us? Right?

Tim Houlihan  1:38  
It's also worth noting that, because these are kind of momentous, in a way, we put a lot of time and effort into planning them. We often travel to get to them.

Kurt Nelson  1:48  
Travel long distances, right? I mean, it's not just like hopping in and driving five minutes down the road. We get book airline flights and travel home for Christmas and or Thanksgiving. Well, maybe not now, because, you know,

Tim Houlihan  2:02  
government's cutting 10% of the flights between right now. So that might be, might be safer to drive,

Kurt Nelson  2:09  
might be safer to drive. Maybe you have to take an extra day or two because you're gonna be driving for 18 hours. But you know that we do. We spend a lot of time in import place importance on getting together. And why do we? Why do we do that? Why do we? Why do we have this need to gather? Well,

Tim Houlihan  2:32  
there's many reasons, right? But the first one is that like we are wired for connection. We are wired like these are getting together fulfills deep psychological drives for belonging and identity and shared meaning. And, you know, as a species, we have succeeded both by competition and collaboration, but the Wi the big win, the big winner for humans, is collaboration. Like we need each other. We need to sit down and be able to trust each other across the table. And that's a really important thing, right?

Kurt Nelson  3:00  
And I think there's an interesting aspect of that. And in the US, in the US, we have a very individualistic kind of societal meme out there where, oh, we're strong individual people. And you know, it's the cowboy out on the Western Front who's all alone on on his horse, and, you know, with the cattle. And I always like to say, Yeah, but every night, what did that cowboy do? Came back to the campfire with his group of other cowboys, right? And they sang songs and ate beans and did silly things,

Tim Houlihan  3:31  
right? So farted. They farted. Let's just say it.

Kurt Nelson  3:36  
Well, when they ate beans, they did, you know, but, but we are wired. We are very much wired for connection, for having those social connections. We are social creatures at the at the heart of it. And as such, gatherings are important and so particularly familiar, family, friends, those types of gatherings which re solidify that sense of community and connection?

Tim Houlihan  4:03  
Yeah, I love in these situations. Psychologists can bring a lot to the table, but even more so, an anthropologist can and Demetrius zygalatus at University of Connecticut, his work is about how participating in rituals, in this collective ritual, whether they're religious or culture or even sporting events, it synchronizes our behavior and our physiology. Heart rates literally align and again. This can happen as frequently at a concert as it could at a church service, yeah, you know, maybe it could happen at

Kurt Nelson  4:35  
a dinner table, you know, at like watching a movie together, right? There are things that we do, and I think it's really important. And I think there's, there's, you know, social identity theory. Who is that? It was a jaffle and Turner, right? I think

Tim Houlihan  4:52  
hashtag and Turner that was like from the 1970s that goes way

Kurt Nelson  4:56  
back, yeah. And it's this idea that shared and shared. Experiences basically reinforce who we are as a group. These these gatherings are important because there are these shared experiences that we we look back on with our memory, and that is, you know, it's really important. And I think Tim an important piece, and you brought this up as we were talking pre about this is that it's not just about one group, it's about multiple groups, right?

Tim Houlihan  5:26  
Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad that you mentioned it Kurt, because it doesn't mean that all of our identity comes from one group. And today, when we have, like, just, I don't want to get political, but just so much of our identity in the past few years has been authorized and overseen by political motives and political groupishness. We've got a lot more groups out there that we could explore and exploit to help us identity, identify who we are, like what about the rock climbing group and the hiking group and the and the hang gliding group and the karate group and the yoga group and like

Kurt Nelson  6:05  
group and the Thanksgiving of the friends giving group, my friends, you know, the group that gets together on New Year's the the sport fan group we're watching, you know, the Thanksgiving Day football game, and I am associated with The Detroit Lions, or the packers or whoever, the Dallas Cowboys who always play on on Thanksgiving. And I think there's a really important part that you're talking about there, that we are more than just one group. And those groups, you know, intermix, and they inter cross pollinate, and they have people from different political things and that different, you know, rock climbing and various different elements. And so you, who you are, is based upon a number of the groups that you your social identity should be a composite of multitudes of groups. And I think that's really thing. And one last thing, oh, go

Tim Houlihan  7:04  
ahead. Well, no, you got one other thing that you want to say about that? Go ahead.

Kurt Nelson  7:07  
No, I was going to switch over to, like, making sure our gatherings that we're not aiming for perfection or actually necessarily following tradition. But it's the intent. It is really important to know that we're getting together because we want to have this connection with others and so, all right, maybe the turkey gets burnt. Maybe the stuffing isn't as great as it could be. Maybe, you know, Uncle Joe gets really drunk and crazy and different pieces, but, you know, the intent is for us to get together as family or friends or whatever the group is, and that is really important.

Tim Houlihan  7:49  
Yeah, so we have been talking about ritual, but I don't think that we've defined it well. Kurt, can you? Can you help us give a better understand, a clearer definition when we're talking about a ritual, and why that's different from anything else. So

Kurt Nelson  8:06  
I will go back to our episode with Mike Norton, Episode 410 back from April of 2024, and if you haven't listened to it, fantastic episode. Mike is brilliant. He's studied rituals for many, many years now, and the way that he talks about it is that rituals are intentional, repeated actions. But here's the important part, they're imbued with meaning. In other words, it's a it's not just a routine that we do, and he talks about it in a really interesting way when he when we had him on, he talked about the this routine, or a ritual of where a husband is making coffee for his spouse and brings that coffee to that person in bed every morning. And for him, it's this ritual where he he focuses in on making the perfect cup of coffee, and that it has a meaning, that he's he's doing this for a purpose, and that it's imbued with this element of care and different things. And his wife may or may not feel it's a ritual. It could be great thank you, or it could be Thank you, honey, right? And so ritual. It has that element of routine, but it is symbolic. It has an emotional component that resonates with us, and it's often social.

Tim Houlihan  9:25  
Yeah, yeah, thank you, because I think that that helps sort of remind us the difference. The key difference, I just want to highlight this between like a habit and a ritual, is this imbued with meaning? Thing, right? This is the part that you're you're focusing on the idea of the ritual, then has the opportunity to enhance our enjoyment, yeah, right. It could actually elevate that habit or that experience, because it's a ritual. It could sometimes, I can. The ritual can reduce anxiety. Yes, you know, sometimes, right? And. And provide some kind of structure, especially in uncertain situations like humans, have used rituals for millennia to help us navigate our way through life. You know marriage. You know the act of marriage is a ritual. You know the act of a of a

Kurt Nelson  10:17  
death or the ring, the giving of rings, the the way the words that are spoken, the very different things there's, there's a lot, and again, thinking about gatherings in this holiday season, right? Is, do you have, like, a pre meal toast or a family grace that you do all the time? Yeah, right. Is there something that is embedded with kind of meaning. Or, do you, I mean, a ritual could even be you watch the same holiday movie every year, you know, it's the Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, or, or, It's a Wonderful Life, you know,

Tim Houlihan  10:55  
or, or, what about the Westminster Kennel Club?

Kurt Nelson  10:59  
Yes, exactly like, Okay, we're gonna watch that, or we're gonna watch the packer Detroit Lions game. And it's part of this. It's something that you look forward to. It's an aspect that brings you together, right? There are all sorts of ways to create or have these rituals, and that's the other interesting piece. Is we can create new rituals. We can. We don't have to be hemmed in by tradition. And it's, it's really a key thing there. So here's

Tim Houlihan  11:33  
a ritual that I would advocate not starting, and that would be asking people to pay for their portion of the meal.

Kurt Nelson  11:44  
You mean, I have to pay for a whole damn Turkey and all the well, no, but okay, so that there's that that's an interesting thing, and it's always interesting. Again, different families have different traditions around this, but, like, we always it's like, okay, somebody bakes the turkey, but somebody else brings the green casserole, and somebody else does the bread and or the pies or whatever it is, right? I think it's important, though, because again, rituals are a key piece of this. And again, rituals are not routines. They are, they they're embedded with this, this, you know, meaning. But they act as emotional anchors, right? They are these things that when we think about a Thanksgiving or a Christmas or New Year's, or even a Halloween, that we, we, we anchor to right. They transform an ordinary act

Tim Houlihan  12:46  
like eating, well, you gave the coffee example is a great

Kurt Nelson  12:49  
one, into something that takes on a bigger, meaningful aspect of our lives.

Tim Houlihan  12:56  
Yeah. So we get this windfall, also from a psychological perspective, that when we're doing the ritual, we actually get a sense of control, right? Because there's a certain amount of certainty that we get with the ritual, because we anticipate and expect certain things are going to happen, even if that's we're expecting crazy uncle Joe to get drunk and get crazy like that. That is actually, to some degree, reduces anxiety because we're sort of counting on it, and the ritual can also heighten our attention and anticipation by focusing our mind on what's happening now,

Kurt Nelson  13:29  
like in the moment, being present in the moment, right? And savoring that, I think that's the other piece, savoring those experiences, savoring that moment of being with your family and doing your pre, you know, meal grace, or the opening that your pajamas The Night Before Christmas. That's, you know, the gift that we always got before on Christmas Eve was pajamas. It's, it's silly, but there's, there's something that gets embedded in our soul with that, and it's, it's very meaningful to us. And so I think that's really important. Well,

Tim Houlihan  14:13  
I'm going to go back to zygalatus again here, because his work is really great at demonstrating how these rituals strengthen our connection and cooperation, they create cohesion through this shared intentionality, through this shared meaning, we all come to the table with this meaning, and that ends up having a really positive effect on the group.

Kurt Nelson  14:33  
Yeah, yeah. How it makes life meaningful, right? So there you go, all right. There is one piece I want to just dig into, because there is an aspect, and I think we talked about this. Well, again, it's when rituals lose meaning, right? When they become an automatic pilot. Again, that coffee example of, okay, I'm embedding my my emotion and my care into this, but somebody else isn't. And again, I you can see this at the Thanksgiving table where, All right, everybody says what they're grateful for before you go for dinner, and everything just becomes, oh, my family, oh, my friends, my family, my friends, everybody, like you, didn't put thought or care into it. And so it just becomes a routine, and it becomes, it doesn't have that same meaning. It doesn't imbued us, imbued embed us with this emotional like connection that I think is so important for

Tim Houlihan  15:35  
that. Yeah, we can imbue that's, that's a great way of thinking about it. Actually, we can imbue ourselves and just think about those situations with some reflection, with a little bit of self reflection and a little bit of self awareness and paying attention and being curious. And have I said I'm grateful for my friends and family at the last 17 of Thanksgivings? Maybe there is something more or maybe I could just get more specific. Maybe I could just actually add something. We get tired of this stuff in part because of hedonic adaptation, right? That even meaningful experiences can become dull over time unless we refresh them. And it's it's good to have somebody in your group, whether it's family or friends, whoever you get together with to to create this momentous gathering who is kind of a Wildcat and says, let's do something different, or I want to try something different. Invite that person to take the floor and give them a give them a voice, let them do something

Kurt Nelson  16:37  
different. And if you don't have that person, maybe it needs Yeah, or just pose to the group like, when was the last time? This is question for every listener out there. When was the last time that you thought about what you do and what your family's rituals are and the way that you do that. What? When was the last time that you thought about the rituals that your family has or your friend group has? In

Tim Houlihan  17:08  
other words, have you been living the status quo for so long that you don't even remember the last time you thought about why you're doing what you're doing

Speaker 1  17:15  
exactly? Yeah, exactly. We'll

Tim Houlihan  17:19  
pause to let you think about that

Kurt Nelson  17:22  
well, and so, all right, so let's give some practical tips thinking about this. So, you know, pause for meaning, right? So I tell people this, like my wife and I, when we got married, we took a moment when everybody was there, and it was in the middle of the reception, and we just went off by ourselves, and we we looked out at that crowd, and we paused, and we said, soak this in. Soak this moment in, because these people are here for us. And it was really, you know, an emotional component. And I think we don't do that enough, even at our family gatherings. And so at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at New Year's, at Halloween, whatever it is, pause and just notice, just pay attention to the people that are there, that the conversations that are going on be that silent observer and make that moment have some meaning, and make it a memory that you take in and that you can keep with you for a

Tim Houlihan  18:27  
while. Be intentional. Just add intention, right? Yeah, just just get into an intentional space in your head, and then just think about small tweaks, a moment of gratitude, a group toast, whatever. How can you deepen your connection with just a tiny little tweak? And you have to be paying attention to see those moments, but but to bring that intentionality to your event, to your experience, adds value to how you experience and could add value to how others experience. It a

Kurt Nelson  19:04  
wealth again, that you know what you're grateful for before Thanksgiving, take a moment and think about it before Thanksgiving happens, and don't show up with my friends and family, oh, and be, you know, take a moment to really think about that and to say this is or it might be friends and family, but get more specific with it. Get more concrete in how you talk about it and why that's important to you, and what it meant this past year and all of those factors that go into that. And it's not easy, but man, it can be really powerful when you do that.

Tim Houlihan  19:48  
Can I just say on that topic, this idea of these moments of gratitude being specific and different? I have a I have two brothers who are absolutely fantastic. At being in the moment and going, this is what's important to me right now. And they're really they remind me all the time about how great it is to have them as brothers, because they do that like they'll sit down and express gratitude about this is important right now. This is what I'm this is what I'm focused on right now, and this intentionality is a really wonderful thing. So I'm really, I'm lucky. I'm really, you know, yeah, grateful to have that around. Okay,

Kurt Nelson  20:29  
well, I think there's another piece, which is we have these traditions. And as we talked about we, you know, sometimes those traditions just fall into a routine that don't carry that ritualistic meaning anymore. And too often, I think we just well, let's just get rid of it, and we'll do something new. And it doesn't have to be that way. It can be an evolution as opposed to deletion. And so you can take that gratitude moment and maybe twist it a little bit, maybe just tweak it somehow, where it's like, call out one person at this table and something they did for you this year that you're grateful for it. All right, that's different. It's a little bit of tweak. It's an evolution of that. And it may not be that it could be something else. It could be, all right, we're going to watch the, you know, the football game, but in between each we're going to, you know, do a little bet on, you know, something make, make, make it something new. Add a layer to it. Don't just let it sit and stagnate. Make some money on it. That's, is that your point that? Well, that's, is that your point? It was going because I'm like thinking, oh yeah, if we're, you know, not everybody's in tune with football.

Tim Houlihan  21:57  
How about this? How about evolution, not dissolution. How about that? Okay, I like it connect us. Use these gatherings to get connected, because these rituals are going to have. Can have meaning. They do have meaning, which is sometimes why we stress about them, because they mean so much. But if we bring intentionality, if we bring the right intentions to these things, we can create a sense of belonging that we didn't have

Kurt Nelson  22:23  
before. Take more memories, create more belonging, create more emotional connection. It's there, all right. So I'm going to leave our listeners with this question, a group question, a group question for for the, for the, what is one ritual that you have? Big ritual, small ritual that gives your gatherings meaning. Think about that, and then think about what you can do with that. So shall we wrap up? There. Sounds good. That would be, that would be good, yeah? All right. So, so should we end with our ritualistic clothes?

Tim Houlihan  23:06  
Sure, let's see how that works. Okay, yes.

Kurt Nelson  23:10  
All right, so it's your, your turn to

Tim Houlihan  23:14  
I was thinking I was gonna put you on the spot. All right. Let's see. We hope that you can take some of these insights from gathering and rituals from this episode that we talked about and take them into the holiday season to whatever events you're going to, and use them to help you find your groove. You you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai