Adopting the ritual stance: The role of opacity and context in ritual and everyday actions

•Causally opaque motor actions in rituals lead to attributions of ‘specialness’.•Such actions appear to make the object desirable to participants.•Describing the action as part of an established ritual increases this effect.•Describing it as an aversive ritual (e.g., Satanic) does not reverse this effect.•Recommendations/implications for understanding of ritual cognition are discussed.