Extreme rituals in a BDSM context: the physiological and psychological effects of the 'Dance of Souls'.

Participation in extreme rituals (e.g., fire-walking, body-piercing) has been documented throughout history. Motivations for such physically intense activities include religious devotion, sensation-seeking and social bonding. The present study aims to explore an extreme ritual within the context of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sadism/masochism (BDSM): the 'Dance of Souls', a 160-person ritual involving temporary piercings with weights or hooks attached and dancing to music provided by drummers. Through hormonal assays, behavioural observations and questionnaires administered before, during and after the Dance, we examine the physiological and psychological effects of the Dance, and the themes of spirituality, connectedness, transformation, release and community reported by dancers. From before to during the Dance, participants showed increases in physiological stress (measured by the hormone cortisol), self-reported sexual arousal, self-other overlap and decreases in psychological stress and negative affect. Results suggest that this group of BDSM practitioners engage in the Dance for a variety of reasons, including experiencing spirituality, deepening interpersonal connections, reducing stress and achieving altered states of consciousness.

Participating in a Culture of Consent May Be Associated With Lower Rape-Supportive Beliefs.

With the recent national focus on rates of sexual violence, many interventions have been proposed, including those that focus on affirmative consent (e.g., "Yes Means Yes" campaign). The goal of the present study was to test whether individuals within a subculture with long-standing norms of affirmative consent-the bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sadism and masochism (BDSM) community-report lower rape-supportive attitudes compared to individuals not from within this subculture. BDSM practitioner participants, adult participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and college student participants completed measures of hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, rape myth acceptance, victim blaming, expectation of sexual aggression, and acceptance of sexual aggression. BDSM practitioners reported significantly lower levels of benevolent sexism, rape myth acceptance, and victim blaming than did college undergraduates and adult MTurk workers. BDSM practitioners did not differ significantly from college undergraduates or adult MTurk workers on measures of hostile sexism, expectations of sexual aggression, or acceptance of sexual aggression. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Altered States of Consciousness during an Extreme Ritual.

Extreme rituals (body-piercing, fire-walking, etc.) are anecdotally associated with altered states of consciousness-subjective alterations of ordinary mental functioning (Ward, 1984)-but empirical evidence of altered states using both direct and indirect measures during extreme rituals in naturalistic settings is limited. Participants in the "Dance of Souls", a 3.5-hour event during which participants received temporary piercings with hooks or weights attached to the piercings and danced to music provided by drummers, responded to measures of two altered states of consciousness. Participants also completed measures of positive and negative affect, salivary cortisol (a hormone associated with stress), self-reported stress, sexual arousal, and intimacy. Both pierced participants (pierced dancers) and non-pierced participants (piercers, piercing assistants, observers, drummers, and event leaders) showed evidence of altered states aligned with transient hypofrontality (Dietrich, 2003; measured with a Stroop test) and flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; measured with the Flow State Scale). Both pierced and non-pierced participants also reported decreases in negative affect and psychological stress and increases in intimacy from before to after the ritual. Pierced and non-pierced participants showed different physiological reactions, however, with pierced participants showing increases in cortisol and non-pierced participants showing decreases from before to during the ritual. Overall, the ritual appeared to induce different physiological effects but similar psychological effects in focal ritual participants (i.e., pierced dancers) and in participants adopting other roles.