For a long time scholars have speculated that coordinated activities between individuals – dancing, singing, walking, and exercising – increases both cooperation and a sense of group cohesion. As early as 1915, sociologist Emile Durkheim spoke of “collective effervescence”, a type of ecstatic energy that is produced by group rituals. Similarly, the historian William McNeill (1995), reflecting on his own military experience during WWII, wrote about the bonding effects that synchronous movement had on his unit:
Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective rituals.
More recently, the synchronicity thesis has been given empirical support from Stanford University psychologists Scott S. Wiltermuth and Chip Heath. In their study, consisting of three experiments, they demonstrated that synchronous activity actually causes people to cooperate and increases group attachment. Continue reading