United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect

Sarah J. Charles; Valerie van Mulukom; Jennifer E. Brown; Fraser Watts; Robin I. M. Dunbar; Miguel Farias

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242546

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 27, 2020
6 Oct 2020 Decision Letter - Amy Michelle DeBaets, Editor PONE-D-20-19769 United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Charles, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== Please make the minor changes suggested by the reviewers and respond to each comment with the changes made. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 20 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Amy Michelle DeBaets, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2.We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [Yes, Four churches were chosen from the Charles, van Mulukom et al (2020) paper, currently under review/] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. 3.Please upload a copy of Figure 3, to which you refer in your text on page 11. If the figure is no longer to be included as part of the submission please remove all reference to it within the text. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The study described in this manuscript investigates an important topic that will be of interest to many behavioural science researchers, and seems to have been conducted carefully and competently. The lit review is appropriate and sufficiently thorough, and the statistical analysis and conclusion seem rigorous and reasonable. Therefore I think this manuscript is already in pretty good shape, and in my opinion nearly ready for publication, and so this will be a light-touch review. Issues that should be addressed: 1. The first reference listed is numbered ‘2’, which is confusing; what happened to reference 1? 2. I am confused by this statement on p. 12: “Both were correlated with bonding change, seen in supplementary figure A.” Apparently this statement refers to an analysis that was done which showed that ‘connection to something bigger’ and ‘length of time’ correlated with bonding change, but it is unclear whose analysis this is. If it is using data from the current study, why is the figure presented before any analysis procedure is actually described? This point of confusion is made worse by the fact that Supplementary Figures A and B are both very low resolution and hard to read, at least in the copy of the manuscript that I received. Please clarify the meaning of this statement, and also include higher-quality image files for these supplementary figures. 3. There are some grammatical problems throughout the manuscript, such as typos and convoluted and confusing sentence structures. Please proofread and correct these as best you can. A few selected examples are below. P. 2: “Consequently, the Broaden and Build hypothesis linking religious ritual to wellbeing via positive emotions’ role in broadening social bonding (32, 33) is unsurprising”; this sentence is worded in a confusing way, I’ve read it several times and am still not sure I understand it. P. 3: Please check the meaning of the phrase “begs the question”, as it is used incorrectly here. I think you mean “raises the question”. Also please re-word the sentence that starts with this phrase, as it is confusing; for one thing, it refers to “the question”, but then states not one but three questions in quick succession. P. 13: “…and showed that in social bonding was…”, please correct. P. 17: Another confusingly-worded sentence: “However, comparing health outcomes from those who attend secular rituals to those who do not on health effects, while taking affect and social bonding into account may help further understand the mechanisms underlying the protective factors that have previously been related only to religious participation”. Please simplify and re-word so that the meaning is clearer. Also, a word like ‘illuminate’ would be more appropriate here than ‘understand’. Reviewer #2: This is a very strong paper that presents innovative data on a topic that should be of academic and practical interest to all. Through carefully testing of their hypothesis linking ritual experience to positive affect and social bonding, the authors convincingly argue that secular groups can be an equally powerful setting for receiving the benefits to welfare of religious participation. The methodology is rigorous and clearly explained, and the results raise fascinating questions for future research. As well as deepening our understanding of the link between ritual and well being, the paper raises a future path for research that drills down into exactly what it is about ritual that produces positive outcomes. To what extent does one have to participate? Are some ritual actions more powerful than others in eliciting social bonding? Will any ritual do? I have some minor thoughts and queries for the authors. The first is regarding the use of Christian religious services as a proxy for religious ritual in the control group. In the literature section, I recommend that the authors make clear what kinds of religion have been studied by scholars when theorising the positive benefits of church attendance, and what forms of religion this excludes. The study rests on a comparison between the Sunday Assembly and Christian Church services, which is understandable given the historical/contextual analogy between the groups and the challenges of the congruence fallacy. However, I would caution against over-generalising the literature in suggesting that religious ritual is equally-powerful in generating social bonding. I wonder, for example, how positive affect and social bonding are generated in atheistic Buddhist communities, or liberal Quaker communities, which commonly hold services without the elements on communal singing and preaching etc. The authors hint at this limitation toward the end of the paper, but a word of caution against generalisation from Christianity to religion/ritual might help guide the reader toward the start of the paper. Secondly, why were the attendees of the Christian churches asked specifically if they felt connected to God/Jesus/ Holy Spirit, and not asked if they felt connected to something bigger than oneself/ the universe/ a sense of awe, as the participants attending the Sunday Assembly were? By wording the question in this way, the survey appears to preclude those people attending Christian church services who have less doctrine-driven experiences of connection, but nevertheless attend church regularly. In some senses, the question might predetermine a distinction that for some attendees does not exist. Both of these queries are to say that exactly what makes a ritual efficacious (leading to social bonding and potential health benefits), if it is not religiosity, appears increasingly unclear as a result of this paper. A useful further venture might be to take this study into the realm of implicit religion studies, and consider how the attendance of sporting matches, to give one example, might have similar affects. Overall, this is an impressively researched, clearly articulated, and engaging peer that is sure to generate excitement from religious scholars around the world. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes:** Hannah R H Gould [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242546.r001
Revision 1
2 Nov 2020 Author Response To Amy Michelle DeBaets, PhD, Academic Editor of PLOS ONE We are hereby resubmitting the article “United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect”, which has been amended to address your comments, and those made by the two reviewers. We would first like to say that we thank you and the reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. We believe that the article is stronger for having taken on the suggestions and addressing the criticisms raised. In your direct comments to us, you asked that we amend the formatting to conform to the PLOS ONE style guide. We have now done this by amending heading font sizes, adding a supplementary information section below the references and updated in-text citations accordingly. Further to your concern of dual publication: The four churches used in this article are a sub-sample from the Charles, van Mulukom et al. (2020) article, which is currently under peer review. They are used as a matched comparison for the data we collected in Sunday Assemblies, and has been approached with a completely different set of analyses and hypotheses. We believe that this way, this does not constitute dual publication. Finally, we would like to apologise for previously having mislabelled figures. We have now updated the figure numbers to be correct and have reuploaded all figures to meet appropriate resolution requirements. Regarding the comments made by Reviewer 1: We have made the changes they have recommended, including clarifying the reasons for conducting correlation plots, reuploading the plots in the supplementary figures S1 file as 300dpi images instead of 70dpi images, and have since gone through the article to reword some other sections that may have previously contained typos, or sections that were more difficult to read. For a full list of how we have addressed the comments, please see the next page. Regarding the comments made by Reviewer 2: Reviewer 2’s comments required more substantial additions to the article, such as an extra paragraph to the discussion regarding implicit religion. These additions have improved the article and have allowed us to ensure that we appropriately describe the scope of our research. Based on their comments, we now emphasise that much of the previous research has been conducted in Western, Christian settings so as to situate our research appropriately and to ensure that we do not claim that the scope of the work we have conducted goes beyond such settings. Thanks again for the feedback on the article and the opportunity to improve the article based on the feedback. On behalf of myself and my co-authors, Yours Sincerely, Sarah Charles, MBPsS Direct Responses to Reviewer points Reviewer #1: The study described in this manuscript investigates an important topic that will be of interest to many behavioural science researchers, and seems to have been conducted carefully and competently. The lit review is appropriate and sufficiently thorough, and the statistical analysis and conclusion seem rigorous and reasonable. Therefore I think this manuscript is already in pretty good shape, and in my opinion nearly ready for publication, and so this will be a light-touch review. Issues that should be addressed: 1. The first reference listed is numbered ‘2’, which is confusing; what happened to reference 1? a. ACTION: We have amended an error being caused by EndNote, where the reference in figure 1 was being listed as reference 1. This has been corrected and the reference list order amended accordingly 2. I am confused by this statement on p. 12: “Both were correlated with bonding change, seen in supplementary figure A.” Apparently this statement refers to an analysis that was done which showed that ‘connection to something bigger’ and ‘length of time’ correlated with bonding change, but it is unclear whose analysis this is. If it is using data from the current study, why is the figure presented before any analysis procedure is actually described? This point of confusion is made worse by the fact that Supplementary Figures A and B are both very low resolution and hard to read, at least in the copy of the manuscript that I received. Please clarify the meaning of this statement, and also include higher-quality image files for these supplementary figures. a. ACTION: We have clarified that we conducted the correlation analysis and provide a correlation plot of this analysis in the supplementary figure file (in the file named S1 Figures). b. ACTION: Attempts have been made to upscale Supplementary Figures A and B. They should now be at 300dpi, instead of R’s default 70dpi. We have upscaled all figures in the article using the same method. 3. There are some grammatical problems throughout the manuscript, such as typos and convoluted and confusing sentence structures. Please proofread and correct these as best you can. A few selected examples are below. a. P. 2: “Consequently, the Broaden and Build hypothesis linking religious ritual to wellbeing via positive emotions’ role in broadening social bonding (32, 33) is unsurprising”; this sentence is worded in a confusing way, I’ve read it several times and am still not sure I understand it. i. ACTION: We have amended the wording of this sentence to help clarify what was meant. It now reads: “Consequently, the Broaden and Build hypothesis linking religious ritual to wellbeing via positive emotions’ role in broadening social bonding (34, 35).” b. P. 3: Please check the meaning of the phrase “begs the question”, as it is used incorrectly here. I think you mean “raises the question”. Also please re-word the sentence that starts with this phrase, as it is confusing; for one thing, it refers to “the question”, but then states not one but three questions in quick succession. i. ACTION: We have amended the wording of this sentence to: “This raises the following questions: which aspects of rituals are particularly apt at providing wellbeing effects, and what role a connection to God plays?; what of rituals that are not religious?” We believe this is better phrased and addresses the issue of misusing the term “begs the question”. c. P. 13: “…and showed that in social bonding was…”, please correct. i. ACTION: We have moved the tables, which stopped the sentence from running over the page and stopped a premature paragraph break. We also added the missing word “change”, so the sentence now reads: “…and showed that change in social bonding was significantly predicted by baseline social bonding, PANAS+ change, and connectedness to something bigger.” d. P. 17: Another confusingly-worded sentence: “However, comparing health outcomes from those who attend secular rituals to those who do not on health effects, while taking affect and social bonding into account may help further understand the mechanisms underlying the protective factors that have previously been related only to religious participation”. Please simplify and re-word so that the meaning is clearer. Also, a word like ‘illuminate’ would be more appropriate here than ‘understand’. i. ACTION: We have reworded this section, so the sentence now reads: “However, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the protective factors that have previously been related only to religious participation, future research could compare health outcomes from those who attend secular rituals to those who do not, while taking affect and social bonding into account.” Reviewer #2: This is a very strong paper that presents innovative data on a topic that should be of academic and practical interest to all. Through carefully testing of their hypothesis linking ritual experience to positive affect and social bonding, the authors convincingly argue that secular groups can be an equally powerful setting for receiving the benefits to welfare of religious participation. The methodology is rigorous and clearly explained, and the results raise fascinating questions for future research. As well as deepening our understanding of the link between ritual and wellbeing, the paper raises a future path for research that drills down into exactly what it is about ritual that produces positive outcomes. To what extent does one have to participate? Are some ritual actions more powerful than others in eliciting social bonding? Will any ritual do? I have some minor thoughts and queries for the authors. 1. The first is regarding the use of Christian religious services as a proxy for religious ritual in the control group. In the literature section, I recommend that the authors make clear what kinds of religion have been studied by scholars when theorising the positive benefits of church attendance, and what forms of religion this excludes. a. ACTION: We fully agree, and thank the reviewer for pointing out this oversight. The majority of studies on health/wellbeing and religion have looked at Western religions. We have noted this in the introduction: “Much of this literature was conducted in western, democratic nations, and within Christian settings, though there are some notable exceptions to this (1-3).” 2. The study rests on a comparison between the Sunday Assembly and Christian Church services, which is understandable given the historical/contextual analogy between the groups and the challenges of the congruence fallacy. However, I would caution against over-generalising the literature in suggesting that religious ritual is equally-powerful in generating social bonding. I wonder, for example, how positive affect and social bonding are generated in atheistic Buddhist communities, or liberal Quaker communities, which commonly hold services without the elements on communal singing and preaching etc. The authors hint at this limitation toward the end of the paper, but a word of caution against generalisation from Christianity to religion/ritual might help guide the reader toward the start of the paper. a. ACTION: We agree that there may be differences across rituals, even the groups mentioned above have some kind of group activities (whether more meditative or contemplative), which we suggest may create similar social bonding effects. We highlight in the discussion ideas for future research in this area. 3. Secondly, why were the attendees of the Christian churches asked specifically if they felt connected to God/Jesus/ Holy Spirit, and not asked if they felt connected to something bigger than oneself/ the universe/ a sense of awe, as the participants attending the Sunday Assembly were? By wording the question in this way, the survey appears to preclude those people attending Christian church services who have less doctrine-driven experiences of connection, but nevertheless attend church regularly. In some senses, the question might predetermine a distinction that for some attendees does not exist. a. RESPONSE: We understand where the reviewer is coming from and we agree that many people sensing a connection to God will experience this with awe and as a connection to something bigger than themselves (e.g. the literature on religion and spirituality shows that for many religious people these two experiences overlap and are not separate). However, we argue that the goal of religious ritual is largely focused on a connection with a specific higher power (e.g. 4), and therefore we adapted the specific survey question phrasing to more exactly tap into the religious or secular context. 4. Both of these queries are to say that exactly what makes a ritual efficacious (leading to social bonding and potential health benefits), if it is not religiosity, appears increasingly unclear as a result of this paper. A useful further venture might be to take this study into the realm of implicit religion studies, and consider how the attendance of sporting matches, to give one example, might have similar affects. a. ACTION: Thank you for this insight. We have added, in the discussion section, suggestions of further research that include implicit religion: “Future research can also look more widely at gatherings of secular groups, which are not intentionally ‘rituals’ but nonetheless may create a sense of connection to something bigger than oneself. A variety of gatherings may function as a form of ‘implicit religion’ (5-7), such as sporting events where one feels connected to a team spirit (8, 9), thus creating social bonds in ways similar to religious rituals. Conducting research in such settings would allow us to better understand the nature and effects of ritual-like social bonding in secular contexts.” References 1. Loewenthal KM, Dein S. Religious Ritual and Wellbeing. Applied Jewish values in social sciences and psychology: Springer; 2016. p. 151-63. 2. Chang W-C. Religious attendance and subjective well-being in an Eastern-culture country: Empirical evidence from Taiwan. Marburg Journal of Religion. 2009;14(1). 3. Roemer MK. Religion and subjective well-being in Japan. Review of Religious Research. 2010:411-27. 4. Van Cappellen P. Rethinking self-transcendent positive emotions and religion: Insights from psychological and biblical research. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. 2017;9(3):254. 5. Aicinena S. Implicit religion and the use of prayer in sport. American Journal of Sociological Research. 2017;7(1):56-65. 6. Lord K. Implicit Religion: Definition and Application. Implicit Religion. 2006;9(2). 7. Bailey E. Introduction. The Notion of Implicit Religion: What it Means, and Does Not Mean. The Secular Quest for Meaning in Life Denton Papers in Implicit Religions. 2002:1-11. 8. Sullivan GB. Collective emotions: A case study of South African pride, euphoria and unity in the context of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Frontiers in psychology. 2018;9:1252. 9. Halldorsson V. National sport success and the emergent social atmosphere: The case of Iceland. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. 2020:1012690220912415. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: United On Sunday - Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242546.r002
5 Nov 2020 Decision Letter - Amy Michelle DeBaets, Editor United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect PONE-D-20-19769R1 Dear Dr. Charles, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Amy Michelle DeBaets, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242546.r003
Formally Accepted
17 Nov 2020 Acceptance Letter - Amy Michelle DeBaets, Editor PONE-D-20-19769R1 United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect Dear Dr. Charles: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Amy Michelle DeBaets Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242546.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .