Broadcast ritual dynamics among U.S. Catholics during the 2025 papal conclave

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ID: 328737
2026
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Abstract
Abstract The 2025 papal conclave offered a natural experiment to trace how shared emotion and group identity evolve on the timescale of hours to days after a global broadcast ritual. Smartphone prompts delivered four surveys per day to 117 U.S. Catholics from two days before the first ballot until twelve days after the inaugural blessing, yielding over 5,900 observations. Continuous-time models estimated that collective enthusiasm showed a small, instantaneous surge (0.25 SD) at the “Habemus Papam” announcement and then decayed by half within sixteen hours. Religious identity changed more slowly, with a half-life of forty-two hours, and exhibited a comparable jump (0.20 SD) at the announcement, both jumps measured relative to the prevailing balloting-phase level. Dynamic cross-effects showed that elevated enthusiasm predicted modest gains in identity (cross-drift = 0.18 SD day−1), whereas higher identity predicted reduced enthusiasm (cross-drift = –0.39 SD day−1), suggesting regulatory feedback. Ritual phases also shifted trajectories: during secret balloting, constant inputs for enthusiasm (+0.13 SD) and identity (+0.12 SD) were modestly elevated relative to pre-balloting, whereas post-announcement phases slightly undershot pre-ritual baselines. Finally, participants with above-average combined engagement showed little to no decline in self-rated religiosity, whereas those below average declined by 0.41 SD. These findings demonstrate a two-step process – an immediate wave of collective affective alignment followed by a slower, lasting identity build – and show that mediated rituals can align dispersed audiences and prolong the salience of group identity.
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Authors David Willinger, Selina Volsa, Stefan Stieger
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Journal PNAS nexus
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag307
URL
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag307/71125805/pgag307.pdf
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