Singh argues that many cultural forms converge across societies because individuals iteratively evaluate and retain variants that seem to help them achieve salient goals. This commentary extends that account to healing rituals and dietary practices. I highlight why such practices are strong candidates for cultural super-attractors, propose mechanisms that make them persist and recur, and offer testable predictions and a research program to discriminate perceived goal satisfaction from objective benefit (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015; Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011).
First, consider the criteria of complexity and robustness. Health-related cultural packages are complex because they combine rules and schedules, roles for specialists, narratives of meaning, material affordances, and embodied actions (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1985; Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011). A fasting cycle is not merely abstention; it has a calendar anchored in moral time, exceptions, and compensations; shared meals at dawn or dusk; and socially recognized guardians of correctness. Ritual healing likewise stitches together settings, music, movement, invocations, preparations, and expectations, features that are well documented in ethnographic and experimental work on ritual (Xygalatas, Reference Xygalatas2022). These packages are robust: they persist through ecological variation, migration, and technological change, often re-emerging after suppression. Such complexity and robustness are hallmarks of cultural super-attractors.
Second, think about selection pressures under uncertainty. Where causal structure is opaque and the stakes are high, people prefer variants that provide a credible sense of control (Sperber, Reference Sperber1996). Regular timing, repetition, sanctification, and specialist authority help produce that sense. Narratives that link purity with health, or moral renewal with bodily renewal, increase the perceived instrumentality of a practice even when causal links are thin. Placebo-compatible scripts such as preparation phases, escalating commitment, and communal witnessing further raise expected benefit by shaping expectation and learning (Wager & Atlas, Reference Wager and Atlas2015). Subjective selection favors variants that deliver this felt control quickly and reliably.
Third, a complementary mechanism is hedonic and affective reinforcement. Comfort foods, communal feasting, rhythmic music, synchronized movement, and identity-affirming stories provide immediate experiential rewards that stabilize adherence (Xygalatas, Reference Xygalatas2022). When a practice couples perceived instrumentality with felt reward, its retention becomes resilient. This synergy helps explain why analogs recur cross-culturally: fasting as purification and discipline; sacred or taboo foods that mark group boundaries; seasonal ceremonies that mix healing intentions with song and dance; and dietary codes that link everyday actions with larger cosmologies.
The subjective selection framework also clarifies when cultural packages align with objective benefits and when they diverge. In domains with rich feedback signals, repeated practice can channel selection toward truth-tracking design (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015; Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011). Infant-soothing routines, for example, may converge on features that actually regulate arousal. By contrast, when feedback is sparse, delayed, or confounded, selection may privilege cues of control and meaning rather than causal leverage. Fad diets and detox narratives illustrate this divergence. They can satisfy goals of purity, control, and identity while having little physiological efficacy.
The view yields five predictions. First, experimentally increasing the perceived efficacy of a ritual or dietary variant by endorsement from respected experts, by elevating perceived precision, or by adding solemn framing should increase reliance more when participants pursue health goals than when they pursue unrelated goals. Second, the presence of alternatives that are evaluated as better for the same goal, such as trustworthy clinical care, clear guidance, and higher health literacy, should reduce adherence to ritual and dietary super-attractors. Third, measures of attention, memory, and reward learning should mediate appeal and retention: practices that capture attention and are easily remembered and rehearsed should show higher cultural stability (Wager & Atlas, Reference Wager and Atlas2015). Fourth, platform-level amplification should accelerate convergence: algorithmic promotion of vivid ritual diets, for instance, should compress variation around a small set of recurring templates (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, Reference Vosoughi, Roy and Aral2018). Fifth, ecological shocks that shrink population size or institutional complexity should threaten maintenance, because transmission chains shorten and evaluative diversity declines (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1985).
Each prediction suggests concrete measurements. Field experiments with ritual specialists and with lay participants can manipulate features that raise perceived control, such as regularity or sanctification, and track adherence over weeks (Sperber, Reference Sperber1996). Cross-cultural coding projects can catalog the components of healing and dietary packages, assessing complexity, redundancy, and the presence of affective features (Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011). Longitudinal analyses of digital traces can quantify diffusion, retention, and convergence of ritual diets and healing narratives, linking engagement metrics with the adoption and stabilization of practices (Vosoughi et al., Reference Vosoughi, Roy and Aral2018).
Public health practice can benefit from this framework. Rather than opposing widespread practices solely on the basis of efficacy, interventions can be designed to redirect goal satisfaction. If purity and control are dominant goals, design elements that provide clean narratives and visible progress markers can be embedded within evidence-based nutrition programs. If social bonding and identity are central, then structured communal meals that follow dietary guidance, with roles and scripts that are meaningful to participants, may improve adherence without importing misleading causal stories.
Finally, the approach clarifies where group-functional explanations retain value. In settings that coordinate shared resources and enforce norms with credible signals and sanctions, group-level properties can stabilize packages that would otherwise drift (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1985). The subjective selection lens identifies how individuals evaluate and retain variants, while group-functional dynamics identify how institutions shape and constrain the evaluative landscape. Bringing these levels together can explain why some practices become common knowledge with enforcement, while others survive as optional traditions or commercial offerings.
In sum, healing rituals and dietary practices meet the criteria for cultural super-attractors and are well explained by subjective selection (Singh). They deliver convincing cues of control and meaning under uncertainty while providing immediate experiential rewards. The framework generates testable predictions and an interdisciplinary program suitable for field settings and for large-scale digital observation. It also distinguishes situations where cultural attractors align with objective benefit from those where they systematically diverge, an empirical boundary that matters for health policy and cultural theory alike.
Singh argues that many cultural forms converge across societies because individuals iteratively evaluate and retain variants that seem to help them achieve salient goals. This commentary extends that account to healing rituals and dietary practices. I highlight why such practices are strong candidates for cultural super-attractors, propose mechanisms that make them persist and recur, and offer testable predictions and a research program to discriminate perceived goal satisfaction from objective benefit (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015; Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011).
First, consider the criteria of complexity and robustness. Health-related cultural packages are complex because they combine rules and schedules, roles for specialists, narratives of meaning, material affordances, and embodied actions (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1985; Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011). A fasting cycle is not merely abstention; it has a calendar anchored in moral time, exceptions, and compensations; shared meals at dawn or dusk; and socially recognized guardians of correctness. Ritual healing likewise stitches together settings, music, movement, invocations, preparations, and expectations, features that are well documented in ethnographic and experimental work on ritual (Xygalatas, Reference Xygalatas2022). These packages are robust: they persist through ecological variation, migration, and technological change, often re-emerging after suppression. Such complexity and robustness are hallmarks of cultural super-attractors.
Second, think about selection pressures under uncertainty. Where causal structure is opaque and the stakes are high, people prefer variants that provide a credible sense of control (Sperber, Reference Sperber1996). Regular timing, repetition, sanctification, and specialist authority help produce that sense. Narratives that link purity with health, or moral renewal with bodily renewal, increase the perceived instrumentality of a practice even when causal links are thin. Placebo-compatible scripts such as preparation phases, escalating commitment, and communal witnessing further raise expected benefit by shaping expectation and learning (Wager & Atlas, Reference Wager and Atlas2015). Subjective selection favors variants that deliver this felt control quickly and reliably.
Third, a complementary mechanism is hedonic and affective reinforcement. Comfort foods, communal feasting, rhythmic music, synchronized movement, and identity-affirming stories provide immediate experiential rewards that stabilize adherence (Xygalatas, Reference Xygalatas2022). When a practice couples perceived instrumentality with felt reward, its retention becomes resilient. This synergy helps explain why analogs recur cross-culturally: fasting as purification and discipline; sacred or taboo foods that mark group boundaries; seasonal ceremonies that mix healing intentions with song and dance; and dietary codes that link everyday actions with larger cosmologies.
The subjective selection framework also clarifies when cultural packages align with objective benefits and when they diverge. In domains with rich feedback signals, repeated practice can channel selection toward truth-tracking design (Henrich, Reference Henrich2015; Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011). Infant-soothing routines, for example, may converge on features that actually regulate arousal. By contrast, when feedback is sparse, delayed, or confounded, selection may privilege cues of control and meaning rather than causal leverage. Fad diets and detox narratives illustrate this divergence. They can satisfy goals of purity, control, and identity while having little physiological efficacy.
The view yields five predictions. First, experimentally increasing the perceived efficacy of a ritual or dietary variant by endorsement from respected experts, by elevating perceived precision, or by adding solemn framing should increase reliance more when participants pursue health goals than when they pursue unrelated goals. Second, the presence of alternatives that are evaluated as better for the same goal, such as trustworthy clinical care, clear guidance, and higher health literacy, should reduce adherence to ritual and dietary super-attractors. Third, measures of attention, memory, and reward learning should mediate appeal and retention: practices that capture attention and are easily remembered and rehearsed should show higher cultural stability (Wager & Atlas, Reference Wager and Atlas2015). Fourth, platform-level amplification should accelerate convergence: algorithmic promotion of vivid ritual diets, for instance, should compress variation around a small set of recurring templates (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, Reference Vosoughi, Roy and Aral2018). Fifth, ecological shocks that shrink population size or institutional complexity should threaten maintenance, because transmission chains shorten and evaluative diversity declines (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1985).
Each prediction suggests concrete measurements. Field experiments with ritual specialists and with lay participants can manipulate features that raise perceived control, such as regularity or sanctification, and track adherence over weeks (Sperber, Reference Sperber1996). Cross-cultural coding projects can catalog the components of healing and dietary packages, assessing complexity, redundancy, and the presence of affective features (Mesoudi, Reference Mesoudi2011). Longitudinal analyses of digital traces can quantify diffusion, retention, and convergence of ritual diets and healing narratives, linking engagement metrics with the adoption and stabilization of practices (Vosoughi et al., Reference Vosoughi, Roy and Aral2018).
Public health practice can benefit from this framework. Rather than opposing widespread practices solely on the basis of efficacy, interventions can be designed to redirect goal satisfaction. If purity and control are dominant goals, design elements that provide clean narratives and visible progress markers can be embedded within evidence-based nutrition programs. If social bonding and identity are central, then structured communal meals that follow dietary guidance, with roles and scripts that are meaningful to participants, may improve adherence without importing misleading causal stories.
Finally, the approach clarifies where group-functional explanations retain value. In settings that coordinate shared resources and enforce norms with credible signals and sanctions, group-level properties can stabilize packages that would otherwise drift (Boyd & Richerson, Reference Boyd and Richerson1985). The subjective selection lens identifies how individuals evaluate and retain variants, while group-functional dynamics identify how institutions shape and constrain the evaluative landscape. Bringing these levels together can explain why some practices become common knowledge with enforcement, while others survive as optional traditions or commercial offerings.
In sum, healing rituals and dietary practices meet the criteria for cultural super-attractors and are well explained by subjective selection (Singh). They deliver convincing cues of control and meaning under uncertainty while providing immediate experiential rewards. The framework generates testable predictions and an interdisciplinary program suitable for field settings and for large-scale digital observation. It also distinguishes situations where cultural attractors align with objective benefit from those where they systematically diverge, an empirical boundary that matters for health policy and cultural theory alike.
Acknowledgements
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Financial support
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or nonprofit.
Competing interests
None.