Rituals can steady nerves and honor a loss, but the science is young

Key takeaways

• In Mauritius, 75 Hindu community members who did a familiar temple ritual after a stressful task felt less anxious, and showed less physical stress, than those who rested¹².
• In a 2022 study of 268 Czech students, planned and posted in advance, a ritual-like action eased anxiety only slightly more than another action or no activity³.
• A well-known 2016 study linking rituals to better karaoke singing is being retracted at its authors’ request, after an audit found raw data missing for four of its studies⁵.
• Grieving people often say funerals and rituals helped, yet studies find no consistent link to grief symptoms; a personal goodbye seems to matter more than a big one⁷⁸⁹.
• Rituals you can’t stop, that take an hour or more a day and bring relief without pleasure, can be signs of OCD, which is treatable¹³.

On the island of Mauritius, floods and cyclones are a real threat. So when researchers wanted to stress out local volunteers, they asked each one to draft a plan for surviving a natural disaster, to be judged by government experts².

The 75 volunteers belonged to the island’s Marathi Hindu community¹. After the task, half went to a local temple to perform a ritual they already knew. The other half sat and relaxed in a space with no religious ties¹².

The temple group reported less anxiety. Their heart rate variability, a measure of how the nervous system is coping with stress, showed less physical strain too¹². Anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas of the University of Connecticut, one of the authors, said ritual seems to give the brain “structure, regularity, and predictability”².

People reach for rituals when life feels uncertain: a prayer before a trip, a candle on an anniversary. Researchers are now testing those traditions, and the field holds a cautionary tale: one of its most famous experiments is being withdrawn.

What makes a ritual different from a habit

Think of a ritual as having two ingredients. One is the action itself: a fixed sequence of steps, repeated the same way each time³. The other is meaning: what those steps stand for to you or your community.

Family psychologist Barbara Fiese and her colleagues drew a similar line. In their review, routines are the practical things a family does regularly, while rituals are symbolic, shared events that carry meaning¹⁰.

A third category can look like ritual from the outside: compulsions. They’re driven by unwanted thoughts, they’re hard to stop, and they bring brief relief rather than pleasure¹³.

	Habit	Ritual	Compulsion
What starts it	A cue in your day	A moment that matters: a test, a transition, a loss	An unwanted thought or fear13
Why you do it	It gets a task done	It means something to you or your group	To quiet anxiety, often only briefly13
How it feels	Automatic and neutral	Chosen, often calming or connecting	Forced and hard to resist13
If you skip it	Little happens	You may miss it	Distress builds
Example	Brushing your teeth	Lighting a candle on a late parent’s birthday	Checking a locked door again and again13

Anxiety pulls people toward ritual, and ritual may pull them back

The Mauritius study grew out of the team’s earlier lab finding that making people anxious made their behavior more ritualized². Their explanation is that fixed, repeated steps make the world feel predictable again, which may let anxiety settle³.

The temple study tested the next question: does doing a ritual calm people down²? With a ritual people already practiced, the answer looked like yes¹. But it was one study of 75 people, and the comparison group only rested¹.

In 2022 the same team ran a bigger lab test with 268 Czech students³. They preregistered it, meaning they posted their plan publicly before collecting data³.

After an anxiety-raising task, students were randomly assigned to a ritual-like action, a different action, or no activity³. Anxiety fell in the ritual group, but only slightly more than in the other two³.

What the evidence can and can’t tell us yet

You may have heard of the karaoke study. In a 2016 paper titled “Don’t Stop Believing,” students who did a short ritual before singing in front of a stranger were reported to sing more accurately than students who simply waited⁴.

In October 2023, all of that paper’s authors asked the journal to retract it⁵. An audit led by co-author Juliana Schroeder could not find the raw data for a pilot study and three main experiments, and found unexplained issues in the posted karaoke data⁵. At the authors’ last public update, in December 2023, the journal was still processing the request⁵.

One co-author was Francesca Gino. In a separate matter, a Harvard Business School investigation concluded she had committed academic misconduct, and Harvard revoked her tenure in May 2025⁶. Gino maintains she is innocent, and in 2024 a judge let her breach-of-contract claim against Harvard proceed⁶.

The co-authors’ records say Gino helped collect the pilot data; for the other studies, none said she did, though some weren’t sure about one karaoke study⁵. The audit doesn’t accuse anyone of faking results. It says the records needed to check them could not be found⁵.

The lesson is about how science earns trust. A striking result from a few small studies is a lead, not a fact. It becomes one when other teams repeat it, ideally with plans posted in advance. The 2022 Czech study, by a different team, found only a small effect³.

Many natural-health readers are rightly skeptical of drug-company research. The same standard belongs here. A study that flatters a practice you love deserves as hard a look as one that flatters a product you distrust.

After a loss, rituals may help in ways symptom scores miss

In 2020, Alexander Burrell and Lucy Selman reviewed 17 studies of funerals and bereaved relatives’ mental health⁷. Five observational studies linked taking part in a funeral to some benefit, and six found no link⁷. Observational studies track what people already do, so they can’t prove cause.

The review’s interview-based studies pointed to what may matter more than a funeral’s size or type: whether the family could shape it and say goodbye in a way that felt meaningful⁷.

A Dutch team led by Huibertha Mitima-Verloop surveyed 552 bereaved people in the Netherlands six months after a death, and again at three years, when 289 responded⁸. People generally rated the funeral and their grief rituals as helpful. Yet neither their view of the funeral nor how much they used rituals was significantly linked to their grief reactions⁸.

The same group later surveyed 232 bereaved people, mostly in Europe, comparing losses during COVID-19 restrictions with losses before the pandemic⁹. Those bereaved during the pandemic said the restrictions hurt their funeral and ritual experiences. Even so, their prolonged-grief symptoms were similar to those of people bereaved before it⁹.

Almost half of participants, 44.6%, found alternative rituals that helped⁹. Doing rituals wasn’t tied to symptom levels, though feeling comforted by the funeral was weakly linked to lower ones⁹.

The authors urged researchers to look beyond symptom scores to understand what funerals and rituals do⁹. Rituals may gather people, mark a relationship and give grief a time and place, even if they don’t make it shorter.

That’s good news for anyone whose goodbye was small, delayed or far from home. A personal, improvised ritual is not a lesser one.

Family rituals: 50 years of research, mostly correlations

In 2002, Fiese and colleagues reviewed 32 studies of family routines and rituals published over the previous half-century¹⁰. Regular routines and rituals were linked with more confident parenting, better-adjusted children and happier marriages¹⁰.

The authors cautioned that studies measured routines inconsistently, relied on convenience samples and couldn’t separate direct effects from indirect ones¹⁰. Families with steady rituals may also differ in other ways, such as stability, income or health.

What turns a dinner into a ritual is the meaning layer. A blessing, a toast, a candle, or each person naming the best part of the day turns a meal into a statement about who your family is. Our companion article on family food traditions covers the research on shared meals.

Bedtime is the family ritual with the clearest numbers

A large international study of bedtime routines surveyed mothers of 10,085 children from birth to age 5 in 13 countries and regions, including the United States¹¹.

The more nights a week families followed a routine, the better the sleep. Children with consistent routines went to bed earlier, fell asleep faster, woke less often and for shorter times, and slept longer overall¹¹. Parents also reported fewer sleep and behavior problems, a dose-dependent pattern: more routine, more benefit¹¹.

The study was a one-time online survey based on parents’ reports, so it can’t prove cause¹¹. It was also sponsored by Johnson & Johnson’s consumer products division, three authors reported consulting or speaking ties to the company, and one was an employee¹¹.

The American Academy of Pediatrics offers a simple three-step routine called Brush, Book, Bed¹²:

• Brush: Help your child brush each night, using a rice-grain smear of fluoride toothpaste under age 3 and a pea-sized amount from 3 to 6.
• Book: Read together for about 15 minutes.
• Bed: Go to bed at the same time every night.

The AAP also says not to wait for yawning or eye rubbing, and that moving bedtime 15 to 20 minutes earlier can make a big difference¹².

What the evidence supports, claim by claim

This is how the main claims rate on our four-level scale.

Claim	Evidence level	What the research shows
A familiar ritual can ease stress after a hard task	Promising but early	One field study of 75 people; the comparison group only rested12
A ritual-like action calms you more than other activities	Promising but early	A preregistered study of 268 students found only a slight edge3
A ritual improves performance on a test or stage	Not enough evidence	The best-known study’s authors asked to retract it; our search found no independent replication45
Funerals and grief rituals lower grief symptoms	Not enough evidence	No trials; observational studies are mixed, and two recent surveys found no clear link789
A personal, meaningful goodbye matters more than a big one	Promising but early	Interview studies in a 17-study review point this way7
Family routines and rituals help children and couples	Promising but early	Decades of mostly observational studies with uneven measures10
Nightly bedtime routines help young children sleep	Promising but early	A large survey shows a dose-response pattern, but it can’t prove cause11
Repeating compulsive rituals is a healthy way to manage OCD	Evidence says no, or unsafe	Effective OCD therapy works by reducing compulsions13

Early evidence is a reasonable basis for trying something this cheap and low in risk. You don’t need a clinical trial to light a candle on an anniversary.

When a ritual turns into a compulsion, or grief gets stuck

The National Institute of Mental Health lists four signs that repetitive behaviors may be obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)¹³:

• You can’t control the thoughts or behaviors, even when you see them as excessive.
• You spend at least an hour a day on them.
• You get no pleasure from them, though they may bring brief relief from anxiety.
• They cause significant problems in daily life.

OCD is treatable. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps many people, and a form called exposure and response prevention reduces compulsions¹³. Medications called serotonin reuptake inhibitors are common and can take 8 to 12 weeks to work, and NIMH warns against stopping them without talking to your provider¹³.

Grief can also get stuck. In 2022, the American Psychiatric Association added prolonged grief disorder to its diagnostic manual¹⁴. For adults, the loss must be at least 12 months past, and for children and teens at least 6 months¹⁴. At least three of eight listed symptoms, such as identity disruption, intense emotional pain or intense loneliness, must show up nearly every day for the past month, and the grief must last longer than cultural or religious norms would expect¹⁴.

The APA estimates that 4% to 15% of bereaved adults have lasting symptoms¹⁴. Most grief eases with time, but therapy built for prolonged grief can help, and support groups can ease isolation¹⁴.

If you or someone you love is in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988, or use the chat on the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline website¹⁵. It’s free, confidential and open around the clock, and you can reach out on behalf of someone else¹⁵. In an emergency, call 911.

How to design a ritual that serves you

These six steps draw on the research above.

1. Pick the moment. Rituals seem most useful at edges: before a hard task, during a transition, after a loss, at the start or end of a day.
2. Choose three to five fixed steps, and repeat them the same way. Fixed, repeated steps are the feature researchers think makes the world feel predictable³.
3. Decide what each step means. Meaning is what separates a ritual from a chore.
4. Use your hands. Light, pour, write, fold, walk. The temple ritual and the 2022 lab ritual were both things people did, not just thought about¹³.
5. Mark a clear start and finish. A bell, a deep breath, a blown-out candle.
6. Invite others when connection is the goal. A shared meal can mark a loss together.

Before a medical appointment, for example, you might write your questions on a card, read them once aloud, and fold the card into your pocket. On the anniversary of a death, a family might cook the person’s favorite dish and each share one memory.

You don’t need to buy anything. The ritual that eased stress in Mauritius was one people already practiced at their local temple¹. Be wary of anyone selling a ritual kit with science claims attached.

Borrowing from other traditions takes care. If a ceremony is sacred to a community, learn from its members and ask before adapting it. Our article on avoiding appropriation covers this in depth.

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

People have long turned to rituals in the face of fear and loss. Independent evidence suggests a familiar ritual can take the edge off stress, though a careful lab test found only a small effect and the most famous experiment can’t be checked. After a death, rituals seem to matter more for meaning and connection than for symptom scores.

Build rituals that you choose and that leave you calmer or more connected. If a ritual starts to feel forced, takes over your day, or grief won’t lift after many months, that’s a signal to reach out for help.

Related reading

• What meditation groups can do, and what they can stir up
• What a peer who’s been there can do that a clinician can’t
• How to tell psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists apart
• People come to wellness groups for answers and stay for belonging
• Heritage diets hold up in research, and you can keep yours alive

Sources

1. Lang M, Krátký J, Xygalatas D. “The Role of Ritual Behaviour in Anxiety Reduction: An Investigation of Marathi Religious Practices in Mauritius.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2020. muni.cz
2. University of Connecticut. “Life-Hack: Rituals Spell Anxiety Relief.” ScienceDaily, June 30, 2020. sciencedaily.com
3. Lang M, Krátký J, Xygalatas D. “Effects of Predictable Behavioral Patterns on Anxiety Dynamics.” Scientific Reports, 2022. ics.muni.cz
4. Brooks AW, Schroeder J, Risen JL, Gino F, Galinsky AD, Norton MI, Schweitzer ME. “Don’t Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2016. Retraction requested by all authors in October 2023; cited only to describe what the paper reported, not as evidence. faculty.haas.berkeley.edu
5. Many Co-Authors project. “Don’t Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety” (co-author entry, last updated December 29, 2023). development.manycoauthors.org
6. Lee GW, Mao WC, Paulus VH. “Harvard Revokes Tenure From Francesca Gino, Business School Professor Accused of Data Fraud.” The Harvard Crimson, May 27, 2025. thecrimson.com
7. Burrell A, Selman LE. “How Do Funeral Practices Impact Bereaved Relatives’ Mental Health, Grief and Bereavement? A Mixed Methods Review With Implications for COVID-19.” OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, 2020 (vol. 85, 2022). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
8. Mitima-Verloop HB, Mooren T, Boelen PA. “Facilitating Grief: An Exploration of the Function of Funerals and Rituals in Relation to Grief Reactions.” Death Studies, 2021. doi.org
9. Mitima-Verloop HB, Mooren TTM, Kritikou ME, Boelen PA. “Restricted Mourning: Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Funeral Services, Grief Rituals, and Prolonged Grief Symptoms.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2022. frontiersin.org
10. Fiese BH, Tomcho TJ, Douglas M, Josephs K, Poltrock S, Baker T. “A Review of 50 Years of Research on Naturally Occurring Family Routines and Rituals: Cause for Celebration?” Journal of Family Psychology, 2002. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
11. Mindell JA, Li AM, Sadeh A, Kwon R, Goh DYT. “Bedtime Routines for Young Children: A Dose-Dependent Association With Sleep Outcomes.” SLEEP, 2015. socsci3.tau.ac.il
12. American Academy of Pediatrics, HealthyChildren.org. “Brush, Book, Bed.” AAP, 2024. healthychildren.org
13. National Institute of Mental Health. “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: When Unwanted Thoughts or Repetitive Behaviors Take Over.” NIMH, 2020.
14. American Psychiatric Association. “Prolonged Grief Disorder.” APA, 2025. psychiatry.org
15. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. “988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.” Accessed 2026. 988lifeline.org