Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little
consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have …

This paper introduces a new construct, the 'pivotal mental state', which is defined as a hyper-
plastic state aiding rapid and deep learning that can mediate psychological transformation …

In times of crisis, humans have a tendency to turn to religion for comfort and explanation.
The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Using daily and weekly data on Google searches …

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior
in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated …

Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that ritual is
a psychologically prepared, culturally inherited, behavioral trademark of our species. We …

The Editor-in-Chief was contacted by the author team following a self-initiated review of the
data reported in this article. In their request, the authors noted that, after an audit into their …

Does the experience of war increase people's religiosity? Much evidence supports the idea
that particular religious beliefs and ritual forms can galvanize social solidarity and motivate …

The last decade has witnessed a number of important and exciting developments that had
been achieved for improving recurrence plot-based data analysis and to widen its …

While the occurrence of rituals in anxiogenic contexts has been long noted and supported
by ethnographic, quantitative and experimental studies, the purported effects of ritual …

Clinical anxiety impairs decision making, and high trait anxiety interferes with learning. Less
understood are the effects of temporary anxious states on learning and decision making in …