Facing Sorrow as a Group Unites. Facing Sorrow in a Group Divides

Collaborative imagination synchronizes representations of the future and fosters social connection in the present

From close friends to people on a first date, imagining a shared future appears fundamental to relationships. Yet, no previous research has conceptualized the act of imagination as a socially constructed process that affects how connected we feel to others. The present studies provide a framework for investigating imagination as a collaborative process in which individuals cocreate shared representations of hypothetical events-what we call collaborative imagination. Across two preregistered studies (N = 244), we provide evidence that collaborative imagination of a shared future fosters social connection in novel dyads-beyond imagining a shared future individually or shared experience in general. Subjective ratings and natural language processing of participants' imagined narratives illuminate the representational features of imagined events shaped by collaborative imagination. Together, the present findings have the potential to shift how we view the structure and function of imagination with implications for better understanding interpersonal relationships and collective cognition.

Why We Gather: A New Look, Empirically Documented, at Émile Durkheim's Theory of Collective Assemblies and Collective Effervescence

For Durkheim, individuals' survival and well-being rest on cultural resources and social belonging that must be revived periodically in collective assemblies. Durkheim's concern was to clarify how these assemblies achieve this revitalization. An intensive examination of primitive religions led him to identify successive levels of engagement experienced by participants and to develop explanatory principles relevant to all types of collective gatherings. Durkheim's conception is widely referred to nowadays. However, the question of its empirical status remains open. We extracted from his text his main statements and translated them into research questions. We then examined each question in relation to current theories and findings. In particular, we relied on the plethora of recent cognitive and social-psychology studies that document conditions of reduced self-other differentiation. Abundant data support that each successive moment of collective assemblies contributes to blurring this differentiation. Ample support also exists that because shared emotions are increasingly amplified in collective context, they can fuel high-intensity experiences. Moreover, recent studies of self-transcendent emotions can account for the self-transformative effects described by Durkheim at the climax of collective assemblies. In conclusion, this century-old model is remarkably supported by recent results, mostly collected in experimental settings.

Theory of collective mind

Theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual. Here, we introduce a theory of collective mind: the ascription of a unified mental state to a group of agents with convergent experiences. Rather than differentiation between one's personal perspective and that of another agent, a theory of collective mind requires perspectival unification across agents. We review recent scholarship across the cognitive sciences concerning the conceptual foundations of collective mind representations and their empirical induction through the synchronous arrival of shared information. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.

A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding

Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to having a conversation-whose common feature is the triadic sharing of experience. Current theories of social bonding have no explanation for why humans should have these unique bonding mechanisms. Here we propose a shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Humans evolved to participate with others in unique forms of cooperative and communicative activities that both depend on and create shared experience. Sharing experience in these activities causes partners to feel closer because it allows them to assess their partner's cooperative competence and motivation toward them and because the shared representations created during such interactions make subsequent cooperative interactions easier and more effective.

Five-year-old children show cooperative preferences for faces with white sclera

The cooperative eye hypothesis posits that human eye morphology evolved to facilitate cooperation. Although it is known that young children prefer stimuli with eyes that contain white sclera, it is unknown whether white sclera influences children's perception of a partner's cooperativeness specifically. In the current studies, we used an online methodology to present 5-year-old children with moving three-dimensional face models in which facial morphology was manipulated. Children found "alien" faces with human eyes more cooperative than faces with dark sclera (Study 2) but not faces with enlarged irises (Study 1). For more human-like faces (Study 3), children found human eyes more cooperative than either enlarged irises or dark sclera and found faces with enlarged irises cuter (but not more cooperative) than eyes with dark sclera. Together, these results provide strong support for the cooperative eye hypothesis.

You Are Not Alone!

Abstract. Experiencing ostracism is a painful situation that can urge a desire to restore social bonds. However, few studies have investigated the conditions under which it leads to ingroup identification. In three studies using minimal groups ( N = 611), we have investigated the consequences of coexperiencing ostracism for group identification and well-being. In Study 1a and 1b ( N = 171; N = 211), the results showed that sharing a common experience of ostracism with an ingroup member increases ingroup identification but does not improve psychological needs during the ostracism experience. In Study 2 ( N = 230), we replicated our results on identification and showed that sharing ostracism fosters psychological closeness with the partner ostracized but does not moderate need recovery.

Human children, but not great apes, become socially closer by sharing an experience in common ground

To create social closeness, humans engage in a variety of social activities centered around shared experiences. Even simply watching the same video side by side creates social closeness in adults and children. However, perhaps surprisingly, a similar psychological mechanism was recently shown in great apes. Here we asked whether the process by which this social closeness is created is the same for children and great apes. Each participant entered a room to see an experimenter (E1) watching a video. In one condition, E1 looked to the participant at the start of the video to establish common ground that they were watching the video together. In another condition, E1 did not look to the participant in this way so that the participant knew they were watching the same video, but the participant did not know whether E1 was aware of this as well, so there was no common ground (E1 looked to the participant later in the procedure). Children, but not great apes, approached the experimenter faster after the common ground condition, suggesting that although both humans and great apes create social closeness by co-attending to something in close proximity, creating social closeness by sharing experiences in common ground may be a uniquely human social-cognitive process.

The dawn of social bonds: what is the role of shared experiences in non-human animals?

Group-living animals can develop social bonds. Social bonds can be considered a type of social relationship characterized by frequent and consistent affiliative (non-reproductive) interactions. Social bonds with conspecifics bring many advantages, also in terms of direct fitness. A characteristic of social bonds is that they need time to develop. Several studies on humans have emphasized the fact that sharing experiences can affect the strength of social bonds. A similar trend can be spotted in non-human species. For example, a recent experiment showed that if chimpanzees watched a video together with a conspecific, they spent more time in proximity compared to conspecifics with whom they did not actively watch a video. Another experiment on fish showed that individuals who experienced a situation of high predation risk together, showed preference for each other compared to those who did not. As the link between shared experiences and social bonds is not explicitly recognized in non-human animals, the main goal of this work is to propose the exploration of this novel research path. This exploration would contribute to shed light on the evolutionary mechanisms of social bond (or friendship) development and maintenance between individuals in different vertebrate species, from fish to non-human primates.

Watching a video together creates social closeness between children and adults

Human social relationships are often formed through shared social activities in which individuals share mental states about external stimuli. Previous work on joint attention has shown that even minimal shared experiences such as watching something together facilitates social closeness between individuals. Here, we examined whether young children already connect with others through joint attention. In the current studies, children sat next to a novel adult who either watched a film with them or was not able to see the film and read a book instead. After the video, we measured children's willingness (i.e., latency) to approach the experimenter holding out a toy. In both studies, the 2.5-year-olds who watched the film together approached more quickly than the other children. These results show that both minimally interactive shared experiences and noninteractive shared experiences lead children to feel more comfortable with a novel adult. This suggests that joint attention interactions, and shared experiences in general, play an important role not only in children's cognitive development but also in their social development and the formation of their social relationships.

Visually attending to a video together facilitates great ape social closeness

Humans create social closeness with one another through a variety of shared social activities in which they align their emotions or mental states towards an external stimulus such as dancing to music together, playing board games together or even engaging in minimal shared experiences such as watching a movie together. Although these specific behaviours would seem to be uniquely human, it is unclear whether the underlying psychology is unique to the species, or if other species might possess some form of this psychological mechanism as well. Here we show that great apes who have visually attended to a video together with a human (study 1) and a conspecific (study 2) subsequently approach that individual faster (study 1) or spend more time in their proximity (study 2) than when they had attended to something different. Our results suggest that one of the most basic mechanisms of human social bonding-feeling closer to those with whom we act or attend together-is present in both humans and great apes, and thus has deeper evolutionary roots than previously suspected.

The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework

Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psychology of ritual, this article provides an organizing framework to understand recent empirical work from social psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience. Our framework focuses on three primary regulatory functions of rituals: regulation of (a) emotions, (b) performance goal states, and (c) social connection. We examine the possible mechanisms underlying each function by considering the bottom-up processes that emerge from the physical features of rituals and top-down processes that emerge from the psychological meaning of rituals. Our framework, by appreciating the value of psychological theory, generates novel predictions and enriches our understanding of ritual and human behavior more broadly.

Prosocial Consequences of Interpersonal Synchrony: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract. The capacity to establish interpersonal synchrony is fundamental to human beings because it constitutes the basis for social connection and understanding. Interpersonal synchrony refers to instances when the movements or sensations of two or more people overlap in time and form. Recently, the causal influence of interpersonal synchrony on prosociality has been established through experiments. The current meta-analysis is the first to synthesize these isolated and sometimes contradictory experiments. We meta-analyzed 60 published and unpublished experiments that compared an interpersonal synchrony condition with at least one control condition. The results reveal a medium effect of interpersonal synchrony on prosociality with regard to both attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, experimenter effects and intentionality moderate these effects. We discuss the strengths and limitations of our analysis, as well as its practical implications, and we suggest avenues for future research.