Ritualization is a behavior that occurs typically in a member of a given
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
in a highly
stereotyped
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
fashion and independent of any direct
physiological
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemica ...
significance. It is found, in differing forms, both in non-human animals and in humans.
In non-human animals
Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often rega ...
, working with
greylag geese and other animals such as
water shrews, showed that ritualization was an important process in their development. He showed that the geese obsessively displayed a reflexive motor pattern of egg retrieval when stimulated by the sight of an egg outside their nest. Similarly, in the shrews, Lorenz showed that once they had become used to jumping over a stone in their path, they went on jumping at that place after the stone was taken away. This sort of behaviour is analogous to
obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans.
in 1910 and Lorenz from 1935 onwards studied the triumph ceremony in geese; Lorenz described it as becoming a fixed ritual.
It involves a rolling behaviour (of the head and neck) and cackling with the head stretched forward, and occurs only among geese that know each other, meaning within a family or between mates. The triumph ceremony appears in varied situations, such as when mates meet after having been separated, when disturbed, or after an attack. The behaviour is now known also in other species, such as
Canada goose.
In humans
Ritualization is associated with the work of
Catherine Bell. Bell, drawing on the