Shared experiences that are exciting are known to make people feel more connected with their group. A new study has found that being together in physical space is crucial for social bonding through such shared experiences.
Researchers monitored physiological arousal among two groups – fans at a stadium during a basketball match, and fans watching the game in small groups at home to arrive at its conclusions. Compared to fans watching at home, fans who attended the match in-person exhibited greater synchrony in physiological activity, especially heart rate.
In theory, when personally meaningful events are shared with a group, there is a fusion between personal and group identities – a phenomenon called “identity fusion”. Identity fusion leads to a synergistic relationship between the two identities. This can, for instance, make people more likely to take an insult directed at a group as a personal attack.
“When transformative experiences that define the personal self are also shared with others, personal and group identities become fused together, creating the synergistic relationship between the two identities.”
Although scientists have known about identity fusion for a long time, it was unclear whether sharing physical space was important for the phenomenon.
According to the researchers, fans watching a sports match rapidly go through phases of excitation and calm, providing a opportunity to measure how ‘in-sync’ they are with each other. The study which used heart rate monitors, continuously measured physiological excitation in participants.
“Group synchrony remained higher in the in-person condition throughout the games, including the half-time interval. Crucially, these differences were not due to people being more physically active in the stadium”.
Compared to fans watching remotely, the physiological measures of fans in the stadium remained in sync throughout the game and even during intervals. After the game, participants were asked to rate how self-transformative the experience was for them. The study found that greater synchrony was related to higher transformativeness, but only in the in-person condition.
“Greater group synchrony led to higher self-transformativeness when spectators watched the game in-person at the stadium, as opposed to remotely, and this synchrony in turn led to increased identity fusion.”
Higher self-tranformativeness was in-turn associated with greater identity fusion as measured by a post-game survey. Read more about the study by G. Baranowski‑Pinto, V. L. S. Profeta, M. Newson, H. Whitehouse, and D. Xygalatas here.
