Experimental Study Of Guozhuang Ritual Enhances The Pumi People's Perceived Control

The perceived control is an important psychological resource for human beings in the face of various natural disasters and social and cultural pressure.The acquisition of perceived control not only benefits people's physical and mental health,but also maintains social harmony and stability.The national culture handed down over thousands of years is the result of people's adaptation to the environment.As the main content of ethnic culture,ritual is an important factor to help people acquire and enhance people's perceived control.The ritual of ancestor worship of the Pumi people--Guozhuang ritual is an important part of the daily life of the Pumi people.Before every meal,the Pumi people offer sacrifices to their ancestors on the fire pit and the guozhuang.Guozhuang ritual has become an important spiritual and cultural activity of the Pumi people,as well as an embodiment of their humanistic feelings and survival wisdom.In order to explore the influence and mechanism of ritual on the perceived control,this study starts with the ritual of Guozhuang of Pumi people,and explores the influence of ritual on the perceived control and the mediating role of positive emotions from three aspects,namely,the ritual action,the purpose of the ritual and the subject of the ritual.In study 1,Pumi adolescents were taken as the research object,and the recall task was used to ask them to describe the situation of Guozhuang ritual.According to the differences in the description contents of the recall in the aspects of ritual action,ritual purpose and emotional experience,the subjects were divided into the high-involvement group and the low-involvement group to preliminarily explore the influence of ritual on the perceived control.The results showed that the perceived control in the high involvement group was significantly higher than that in the low involvement group.In order to further explore the roles of the ritual action and ritual purposes in the Guozhuang ritual enhancing perceived control,study 2 draw Guozhuang ritual physical feature(action)and the cultural feature of the core factors(purpose/meaning),creating a novel ritual,to manipulate the two variables: ritual action and ritual purpose,to proceed 2(ritual action: action vs.no action)x 3(ritual purpose: Thanksgiving VS blessing VS without purpose)behavior experiment,and discusses the mediating role of positive emotions.It was found that only performing ritual actions could directly enhance the perceived control of Pumi adolescents,while the purpose of prayer could only enhance the perceived control through the full mediation of positive emotions.To explore the different effects of the difference of the subject of ritual on the perceived control,and increase the ecological validity of research,in study 3,middle-aged and elderly people of Pumi ethnic group were given a recall task to initiate Guozhuang ritual experience.According to the number of generations of their ancestors,middle-aged and elderly people were divided into two groups:high-involvement group and the low-involvement group,the results showed that the perceived control in the high-involvement group was significantly higher than that in the low-involvement group.Further analysis showed that only when the middle-aged expressed their gratitude to their ancestors in Guozhuang ritual,could they affect their perceived control through the full mediation of positive emotions..To sum up,this study draws the following conclusions:1.The degree of ritual involvement influences the degree of perceived control.The higher the degree of ritual involvement,the stronger the sense of control.2.Pitual actions and ritual purposes have different influence paths on enhancing people's perceived control.Ritual actions directly enhance the perceived control,and ritual purposes to enhance the perceived control through the full mediation of positive emotions.3.The subject of the ritual are different,and the purpose of the ritual that the positive emotion plays a role in the perceived control control is different.Adolescents tend to instrumental purposes,while middle-aged and older adults tend to emotional purposes.