Using the Power of Ritual to Reduce Anxiety

Practicing a ritual before a stressful task can boost performance.

Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

Key points

• Rituals are a fixed sequence of behaviors that have no instrumental purpose but are imbued with meaning.
• Performing a ritual before a stressful task lowers heart rate and anxiety.
• Students who performed a ritual before a math exam performed better than students who sat quietly.

If you watch Last Week Tonight, you may not have noticed that every episode begins the exact same way…and I’m not talking about the theme song. As the audience applauds wildly and the camera swoops in on host John Oliver, he carries out a ritual. John drums his hands on his desk, extends his arms out wide, says “welcome” three times, claps once, and then introduces himself.

Rituals are an important part of life. All humans, and even some other mammals, appear to engage in ritual. We most commonly associate rituals with religion, but we also find them in sports, art, community organizations, and everyday life. Rituals can be performed individually or collectively. But most importantly for our purposes, ritual may be a way to help students manage anxiety and perform better academically.

What is a ritual?

Before I discuss the psychological impact of ritual, it’s important to define what a ritual is. Psychologists contend that three features differentiate a ritual from a habit or routine.

1. A ritual is a fixed sequence of behaviors that must be performed the same way, in the same order, every time. John Oliver always drums, extends, and claps while saying the same phrase. In most cases, if a person messes up a step they must begin again, or the ritual is not complete.
2. A ritual has no instrumental purpose. The behaviors connect in no obvious, tangible way to the task at hand. Nothing John Oliver does necessarily relates to his goal to tell jokes for 20 minutes. But repeating that familiar sequence likely gets him started without having to think about how to start.
3. A ritual has symbolic meaning to the person doing it. Only John Oliver knows why he does what he does, but clearly it gets him ready to film his show. Rituals may connect to spiritual entities, culture, or family, but sometimes they just feel right for reasons you can’t put your finger on.

Compare these features to a routine, like making breakfast. I usually scramble three eggs, toast bread, wash an apple, peel and slice a banana, spread crunchy peanut butter and banana on my toast, and drizzle ketchup on my eggs. This routine helps me feel ready to take on my day, but it’s not a ritual. If I change the order or swap the apple for strawberries, I don’t care and I keep going; these behaviors are clearly instrumental for the goal of eating, and making breakfast has no deeper meaning.

Rituals reduce anxiety and boost performance

For a series of studies, psychologists invented a ritual for students to perform:

1. Draw a picture of how you’re feeling right now.
2. Sprinkle salt on your drawing.
3. Count to five out loud.
4. Crinkle up your drawing.
5. Throw your drawing in the trash.

Nonsense, right? But students who performed this ritual before publicly singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” exhibited lower heart rate and self-reported anxiety, leading to better performance (as measured by the video game “Karaoke Revolution”).

More importantly, students who performed this ritual before a stressful math exam performed better than students who waited quietly for a few minutes. Interestingly, the effect of the ritual disappeared if students were told these were just random behaviors. Although a ritual can be arbitrary and even downright silly, it must be imbued with meaning to work.

Why does ritual calm us?

Psychologists haven’t yet pinned down the answer to that one. Engaging in a sequence of simple behaviors completely within our own control might help us impose order on the world. Performing rituals could distract us from our anxiety. Or rituals may be a placebo, using the power of belief to lower anxiety and help us through stressful experiences.

Ritual might also expand our awareness of ourselves and situate our goal within the larger context of our lives. In another study, participants learned a nine-step ritual involving hand movements and breath. They then attempted a challenging test known as a Go/No-Go task. In this case, people who performed the ritual were no better at the task, but their electroencephalographic (EEG) readings indicated they weren’t as perturbed when they messed up. In other words, ritual might help students calm down before an exam and not panic when something goes wrong.

Leveraging ritual in education

I think we do a good job introducing ritual into the lives of young students to provide structure and predictability to their days. But rituals tend to fade away as we expect older children and young adults to increasingly self-regulate. I say we bring ritual back into the classroom to help students succeed.

Even though ritual is meant to reduce anxiety, the behaviors don’t have to be traditionally anxiety-reducing, like breathing or meditation. Leveraging expressive writing as a ritual may be an effective double-dip into behavioral science ways to reduce anxiety. But students can also sprinkle salt on paper and throw it away. The sequence of behaviors doesn’t matter as long as it’s fixed, repeated, noninstrumental, and meaningful in some way.

The most obvious application to me is using ritual to alleviate test/math anxiety. Each student could develop their own ritual, much like how basketball players each have their own ritual before a free throw. Individual rituals help ensure each student feels comfortable with the behaviors (notably for those students prone to compulsions) and imbue their ritual with their own meaning. Instructors could then build 3 minutes of “ritual time” into exam days.

Or a class could develop a collective ritual. We clearly see in society how powerful rituals can be when performed as a group. Having a ritual that begins each class or exam could encourage attendance because students won’t want to miss out. These shared behaviors could even enhance students’ sense of belonging. Regardless of how you share the power of ritual with students, performing a few simple behaviors could help students be less anxious about their studies and show improved performance.