Rituals Without Religion (with Michael Norton)

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🗓️ 8 April 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

While religion may play less of a role in many people's lives, rituals--the lifeblood of religion--remain central to the human experience. Listen as Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School explains how and why rituals remain at the center of our lives--they give meaning to life-cycle events and secular holidays, calm our fears, and give us a sense of control when the pressure to perform can otherwise overwhelm us.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.8	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done
0:24.5	going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is March 19, 2024, and my guest is psychologist Michael Norton, the Herald Embryerley professor of
0:44.8	business administration at Harvard Business School he is the author of
0:48.0	the ritual effect from habit to ritual harness the surprising power of everyday actions.
0:55.0	And that book is our topic for today.
0:57.5	Michael, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:59.0	Russ, thanks so much for having me.
1:01.0	Let's start with the difference between habit and ritual, and I would, I'm going to throw in routine.
1:07.4	It's not your subtitle, but you do talk about routine.
1:10.6	So we have, as individuals, we have habits, we have routines, and we have as individuals we have habits, we have routines and we have rituals. They are somewhat
1:16.4	similar but they have very, very important differences.
1:19.7	That's right. I think that sometimes we use the word habit to refer to rituals sometimes we use
1:24.9	ritual to refer to habit and so we have been trying in our research to tease
1:29.1	apart really what are the differences between these and I do think as you said
1:32.3	that it ends up being
1:33.5	quite important so for me habits and routines are things that are a bit dry
1:38.8	they're unemotional their tasks that we need to get done, and when we do them, we can check them off our list.
1:46.8	And good habits are great.
1:47.9	I'm not anti-habit in any way.
1:50.3	I should have better habits.
1:51.8	You know, I should exercise more and things like that.
	...

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