One key characteristic of rituals is that people know precisely why they are performing each action.

People often feel obliged to perform rituals exactly as their ancestors did.

When a ritual does not produce the intended outcome, people are likely to blame something about the different steps involved in the ritual as going wrong than that the ritual simply did not work.

Children find it difficult to imitate behaviors when there is no obvious goal to the actions, especially when the behaviors are part of a conventional ritual.

Ritual form hypothesis proposes that we inherently recognize some rituals as religious because of their features.

Modes of Religiosity Theory proposes that the frequency with which a ritual is performed is associated with other aspects of that religion.

According to Modes of Religiosity Theory, Catholic Mass would be characterized by the imagistic mode.

One important distinction between Modes of Religiosity and Ritual Form Hypothesis is that Ritual Form Hypothesis claims that ritual frequency is key to understanding the diversity of rituals.

Modes of Religiosity and Ritual Form Hypothesis are a part of CSR as scientific theories because they make testable predictions.

Research and theories in CSR help to demonstrate that rituals are not for the naïve or religious fanatics, but that these behaviors are a product of being human.