The Price of Being Social: The Role of Emotions in Feeding and Minimizing Conflicts - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 105

Accordingly, a series of findings proves that rituals have a relevant impact on
participants' health and psychological well-being (Anastasi and Newberg 2008 ;
Hummer et al. 1999 ; Levenson 2003a , b ; for a critical review see Lee and
Newberg 2005 ). Actually, religious subjects benefit better health than those with low
religiosity (Levin and Schiller 1987 ). The interplay of ritual and health is specifically
associated with the claim that rituals such as religion are important sources of either
emotional distress or support (Turner et al. 1995 ). For instance, ritual contributes to
have an effect of reduction on the level of anxiety (Anastasi and Newberg 2008 ).
On the one hand, animal and human rituals have in common several features
as the fact to be tied to emotional components that favor social affiliation as well as
individual fitness; on the other hand, the emotional aspect seems to be more complex
in human ritual behaviors. It is plausible to suppose that emotions such as empathy
might have had a main role in the transition from basic to advanced ritual practices—
thus, from simple social structures to more complex social institutions. In fact,
empathy arises in different grades: a basic affective aspect of empathy is explained
by the simulation mechanisms typical of emotional contagion; however, there is a
more complex cognitive component of empathy that is not limited to sharing but
includes a mental understanding of others (Davis 1994 ). The affective empathy
shared with animals might have triggered complex forms of social behaviors as
altruism (e.g., see Bering 2006 ), leading to forms of cognitive empathy underlying
more advanced rituals.
This passage leads us to the last part of our argument where we will highlight the
implications of a sociality driven by more complex emotionally charged rituals.

6.3 Emotions and “Sacred Values”

As yet, we have highlighted the role of emotionally charged rituals in restoring and
maintaining relationships with individuals considered to be particularly important in
group dynamics, and we have given support to the hypothesis that these mechanisms
might have served the main purpose of fostering more evolved social structures
having a bond-strengthening effect. To this extent, we have drawn attention to the
positive role of emotions in order to show how they minimize conflicts. However,
in our opinion, this point of view renders an incomplete truth about human nature:
sociality, especially in its complex forms, has a high price. In our perspective, the
same mechanisms that lead the social order—emotionally charged rituals—are also
the foundation of new social conflicts.
Actually, another essential way to account for the role of emotions in social
life is to look at their character of enhancing conflicts. Probably, this complemen-
tary function arises when the two natures of emotions reported previously (see
Sect. 6.1 ) conflict with each other. This process appears to be particularly clear
in human societies. Consider the case of religion. Sheikh et al. ( 2012 ) present
evidence that participation in religious ritual led people to be more likely to
consider preferences as sacred values . The more people participate in religious