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Figure 3.1 depicts interaction ritual as a set of processes with causal connections and feedback loops among them. Everything in the model is a variable.

Figure 3.1 Interaction ritual.

Interaction ritual (IR) has four main ingredients or initiating conditions:

1 Two or more people are physically assembled in the same place, so that they affect each other by their bodily presence, whether it is in the foreground of their conscious attention or not.

2 There are boundaries to outsiders so that participants have a sense of who is taking part and who is excluded.

3 People focus their attention upon a common object or activity, and by communicating this focus to each other become mutually aware of each other’s focus of attention.

4 They share a common mood or emotional experience.

These ingredients feedback upon each other. Most importantly, number 3, the mutual focus of attention, and number 4, the common mood, reinforce each other. As the persons become more tightly focused on their common activity, more aware of what each other is doing and feeling, and more aware of each other’s awareness, they experience their shared emotion more intensely, as it comes to dominate their awareness. Members of a cheering crowd become more enthusiastic, just as participants at a religious service become more respectful and solemn, or at a funeral become more sorrowful, than before they began. It is the same on the small-scale level of a conversation; as the interaction becomes more engrossing, participants get caught up in the rhythm and mood of the talk. We shall examine the micro-empirical evidence on this later. The key process is participants’ mutual entrainment of emotion and attention, producing a shared emotional / cognitive experience. What Durkheim called collective consciousness is this micro-situational production of moments of intersubjectivity.

There are four main outcomes of interaction rituals. To the extent that the ingredients successfully combine and build up to high levels of mutually focused and emotionally shared attention, participants have the experience of

1 group solidarity, a feeling of membership;

2 emotional energy [EE] in the individual: a feeling of confidence, elation, strength, enthusiasm, and initiative in taking action;

3 symbols that represent the group: emblems or other representations (visual icons, words, gestures) that members feel are associated with themselves collectively; these are Durkheim’s “sacred objects.” Persons pumped up with feelings of group solidarity treat symbols with great respect and defend them against the disrespect of outsiders, and even more, of renegade insiders;

4 feelings of morality: the sense of rightness in adhering to the group, respecting its symbols, and defending both against transgressors. Along with this goes the sense of moral evil or impropriety in violating the group’s solidarity and its symbolic representations.

These are the basic elements of the theory. In the following sections I will examine the evidence on how each of these operates.