Being in a crowd bonds people via physiological synchrony

G Baranowski-Pinto,D Xygalatas,V L S Profeta,M Newson,H Whitehouse

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-04548-2

Abstract

Collective events can generate intense emotions, shape group identities, and forge strong bonds. Do these effects extend to remote participation, and what are the psychological mechanisms underpinning their social power? We monitored psycho-physiological activity among groups of basketball fans who either attended games in-person (in a stadium) or watched games live on television in small groups. In-person attendance was associated with greater synchronicity in autonomic nervous system activation at the group level, which resulted in more transformative experiences and contributed to stronger identity fusion. Our findings suggest that the social effects of sports depend substantially on the inter-personal dynamics unfolding among fans, rather than being prompted simply by watching the game itself. Given the increasing prevalence of virtual experiences, this has potentially wide-reaching implications for many domains of collective human interaction.

Highlights

Collective events can generate intense emotions, shape group identities, and forge strong bonds
We found that, compared to watching the game remotely, groups who attended the game in-person as part of a crowd displayed heart rate dynamics characterized by greater synchrony, as evidenced both by DET [t(22.235) = 2.768, p = 0.011, d = 1.089] and average diagonal line length (ADL) [t(23.498) = 3.213, p = 0.004, d = 1.207]
Using simple recurrence (RQA) metrics extracted from individual Heart rate (HR) data, we found no relationship between transformativeness and intra-individual patterns of arousal

Summary

Introduction

Collective events can generate intense emotions, shape group identities, and forge strong bonds. Do these effects extend to remote participation, and what are the psychological mechanisms underpinning their social power? In-person attendance was associated with greater synchronicity in autonomic nervous system activation at the group level, which resulted in more transformative experiences and contributed to stronger identity fusion. We examined the psycho-physiological effects of attending sports matches among basketball fans, hypothesizing that in-person attendance would lead to a more intense, transformative experience for participants, because such experiences largely depend on the interpersonal dynamics among fans, rather than strictly on the properties of the game itself. A key question remains, as to what it means for a transformative event to be shared

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Conclusion