Can transformative experiences bridge the gap between receiving communities and formerly incarcerated persons?

The stigma of incarceration contributes to the global reoffending crisis and remains a barrier to reintegration into receiving communities. Recent research suggests that the key to solving this problem may lie in shared transformative experiences. We tested whether the salience of such experiences can overcome stigma among members of receiving communities when they act as gatekeepers for formerly incarcerated persons seeking employment. Across four experimental studies with seven samples of US and UK nationals (N = 2091), we examined the conditions under which transformative experiences can lead to identity fusion, a powerful form of social bonding and contribute to hiring and optimism about reintegration among prospective employers. In six of seven samples, those who reported stronger transformative experiences of their own were more fused to a job applicant, which was linked to positive attitudes towards them and willingness to hire them. Effects of formerly incarcerated persons' experiences varied between national samples and experience contexts: American citizens were more receptive to experiences in prison, while British citizens were more influenced by sports experiences. These findings highlight the potency of transformative experiences to forge connective bridges to stigmatized groups, despite cultural differences in perceptions of relevant social cues about formerly incarcerated people.

A society as a clearly membered, enduring, territory-holding group

I have attempted to provide a concept of societies that will foster productive cross-disciplinary discussions, namely one incorporating these three elements: (1) A mechanism for group identification, by which members distinguish those who belong from those who do not; (2) the potential for this membership to last for generations; and (3) control over a shared physical space. Herein, I respond to thoughtful commentaries from academics across the social and biological sciences, addressing their insights on the importance of identity in determining society boundaries, how institutions and nations relate to identity, the complications of territoriality as a definition component, how societies fragment, the workings of multitier sociality, and the significance of cooperation.

What kinds of speeches motivate climate action?

The scientific evidence on the harmful consequences of climate change is clear yet appeals to scientific evidence alone may not be enough to inspire sufficient climate action. We analysed the effectiveness of four different speeches in video format delivered by a Global South politician to strengthen psychological bonding with humanity at large and motivate climate action in the form of donations with samples from the US, UK and South Africa. Each speech focused on one core argument: scientific evidence, morality, globally shared life experiences or humanity's shared ancestry. All speeches significantly increased bonding with humanity and donations. On average, the speeches were equally effective at increasing donations. The speech that appealed to humanity's shared ancestry had a stronger effect on bonding with humanity than the other three speeches and the speeches that appealed to globally shared life experiences and humanity's shared ancestry made participants feel less sad, angry and helpless than the speeches that appealed to scientific evidence and morality. We also present evidence on the effects of the speeches delivered by a Western academic in the UK and we discuss implications of our findings for future research and practical efforts to motivate climate action.

Shared suffering predicts prosocial commitment among Turkish earthquake survivors

Previous research suggests that the perception of shared emotion associated with personally transformative events can foster a strong form of social bonding known as 'identity fusion', which motivates pro-group action. Here we test predictions from this model among Turkish citizens and Syrian refugees following the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey on February 6th, 2023. The lead researcher administered surveys in person to 120 Turkish earthquake survivors in the most heavily affected areas. In line with our predictions, mean levels of identity fusion significantly increased with perceived shared suffering for both Turkish and Syrian groups. Further, identity fusion predicted prosocial commitment, measured by the expressed willingness of earthquake survivors to volunteer assistance to disaster victims. Remarkably, participants were as likely to pledge help to other Turkish earthquake survivors as they were to their own families. This study contributes to a growing understanding of how shared suffering facilitates group bonding and cooperation, both within and across social groups.

Extreme overvalued beliefs and identities: revisiting the drivers of violent extremism

Recent efforts to understand violent extremism have appealed to the concept of extreme overvalued beliefs as a way of explaining fixation and extremist commitments. Extreme overvalued beliefs refer to an ego-syntonic fixation that grows more intense, absolute and emotional over time and is shared with a sub-community. However, while extreme overvalued beliefs precede many targeted attacks, most people who hold them do not resort to violence. Previous research has highlighted four 'ingredients' associated with an increased risk of violent extremism, only three of which are captured in studies linking extreme overvalued beliefs to violence: perceived outgroup threat, demonization of the outgroup, and endorsement of violence. We argue that the fourth element-missing from the literature on extreme overvalued beliefs-is identity fusion: a visceral sense of oneness with the group in which personal and group identities become functionally equivalent. The goal of this paper is to improve current understanding of the circumstances where individuals with extreme overvalued beliefs turn into potential attackers. We show that when certain types of extreme overvalued beliefs are combined with identity fusion it can lead to violent self-sacrifice. Drawing on evidence from psychiatry, evolutionary anthropology, behavioural psychology and computational linguistics, along with a forensic analysis of three high-profile case studies of lone-actor grievance-fuelled violence, we explore the interplay of these risk factors and propose a more encompassing construct for explaining violent extremism. We call this hybrid framework Extreme Overvalued Beliefs and Identities (EOBI), synthesising the findings of interdisciplinary research on pathological fixation and identity fusion.

Psychological significance of name changes: A case study of (north) Macedonia's name referendum

Multiple instances of rebranding of corporations or sports teams, or changes of personal names suggest that imposed change of symbols that people identify with leads to resistance towards the symbol change. In this paper, we examine the predictive role of sacred values, identity fusion, identification and essentialism in explaining such resistance, in a unique political context of a national referendum to change Macedonia to North Macedonia. Participants (ethnic Macedonians, N = 301) took a survey measuring these variables, along with their voting intentions and behaviour, 1 week prior to a national referendum on the name change, and again several weeks later. The results indicated that while all variables predicted negative attitudes towards the name change, only considering the name a sacred value and, to a lesser extent, being identified with the country, uniquely predicted this outcome, and only sacred values uniquely predicted voting behaviour. A large proportion of the participants were fully fused with the name "Macedonia," which may have limited its predictive value. A cross-lagged analysis suggested a potential causal path from national identification to viewing the name as sacred, essentializing it and becoming fused with it. This study is the first to examine the psychological mechanisms that drive resistance to symbol change.

Regulating community well-being through traditional mourning rituals: Insights from the Luhya People of Kenya

Background and objectives

Rituals have been reported to serve as a vital mechanism for expressing grief and fostering communal support worldwide. Despite these benefits, use of rituals in Indigenous communities is threatened by missionization, globalization, and westernization. This study sought to examine the relevance of traditional mourning rituals in community morality and well-being. Anchored in cultural evolutionary theory, the study employed an ethnographic research design.

Methodology

Data were collected from 45 community elders, 30 bereaved adults, 30 bereaved adolescents, and 8 religious leaders through focus group discussions and interviews.

Results

The study established five mourning rituals practiced by the Luhya people, each potentially serving an evolutionary function for community survival and well-being. Our findings show that Luhya traditional mourning rituals play an important role in community well-being, though not all members may benefit equally from these effects.

Conclusions and implications

The study established conflict over rituals with differing viewpoints from religious leaders, cultural leaders, and the western biomedical approach to mental well-being. Yet, the bereaved reported that both Luhya and religious rituals helped them process their grief. To address mental health issues fully, it is important to establish collaboration between western models, religious approaches, and cultural approaches.

Why some coalitions benefit from historical myths more than others

Behavioural ecologies in themselves can create variation in fitness interdependencies among individuals, and hence modulate the functionality of invoking historical myths. We develop this possibility for the case where coalitions form to attack and exploit enemies, or to defend and protect against hostile out-groups. We propose that invoking historical myths are functional and observed especially when groups aggressively expand.

Cultural tightness and resilience against environmental shocks in nonindustrial societies

With climate change intensifying, building resilience against climate-related shocks is now a global imperative. Historically, many societies have faced natural hazards, with some adapting through specific social and cultural practices. Understanding these responses is key to developing modern sustainability strategies. Here, we address this issue by developing a mathematical model explicitly accounting for various environmental shock dimensions, cooperative activities common in nonindustrial societies, and decision-making based on material factors as well as personal values and social norms. Our results suggest that cultural looseness can be vital for effectively responding to mild, slow-onset shocks, leading to moderate cooperation and minimal cultural change. Conversely, coping with severe shocks requires an intermediate level of cultural tightness, fostering significant cultural transformation and high cooperation. While tight societies struggle with new shocks, they may handle regular, severe, fast-onset shocks better than do loose societies. Our research enhances understanding of environmental impacts on cooperation, cultural tightness, and social resilience, and highlights cultural adaptations useful in addressing current environmental challenges like global warming, floods, tornadoes, and soil degradation.

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual

Collective gatherings are often associated with the alignment of psychophysiological states between members of a crowd. While the process of emotional contagion has been studied extensively in dyads as well as at the population level, our understanding of its operation and dynamics as they unfold in real time in real-world group contexts remains limited. Employing a naturalistic design, we investigated emotional contagion in a public religious ritual by examining the relationship between interpersonal distance and autonomic arousal. We found that proximity in space was associated with heightened affective synchrony between participants in the context of the emotionally laden ritual (a Hindu procession) compared with an unstructured walk along the same route performed by the same group. Our findings contribute to the understanding of collective emotions and their underlying psychophysiological mechanisms, emphasizing the role of cultural practices in shaping collective emotional experiences.

The Spiral of Attention, Arousal, and Release: A Comparative Phenomenology of Jhāna Meditation and Speaking in Tongues

Buddhist Jhāna meditation and the Christian practice of speaking in tongues appear wildly distinct. These spiritual techniques differ in their ethical, theological, and historical frames and seem, from the outside, to produce markedly different states of consciousness-one a state of utter calm and the other of high emotional arousal. Yet, our phenomenological interviews with experienced practitioners in the USA found significant points of convergence. Practitioners in both traditions describe a dynamic relationship between focused attention, aroused joy, and a sense of letting go or release that they describe as crucial to their practice. This paper highlights these shared phenomenological features and theorizes possible underlying mechanisms. Analyzing our phenomenological data through the lens of various theories of brain function, including sensory gating and predictive processing, we propose that these practices both engage an autonomic field built through a spiral between attention, arousal, and release (AAR).

A soccer-based intervention improves incarcerated individuals' behaviour and public acceptance through group bonding

As incarceration rates rise globally, the need to reduce re-offending grows increasingly urgent. We investigate whether positive group bonds can improve behaviours among incarcerated people via a unique soccer-based prison intervention, the Twinning Project. We analyse effects of participation compared to a control group (study 1, n = 676, n = 1,874 control cases) and longitudinal patterns of social cohesion underlying these effects (study 2, n = 388) in the United Kingdom. We also explore desistance from crime after release (study 3, n = 249) in the United Kingdom and the United States. As law-abiding behaviour also requires a supportive receiving community, we assessed factors influencing willingness to employ formerly incarcerated people in online samples in the United Kingdom and the United States (studies 4-9, n = 1,797). Results indicate that social bonding relates to both improved behaviour within prison and increased willingness of receiving communities to support re-integration efforts. Harnessing the power of group identities both within prison and receiving communities can help to address the global incarceration crisis.

Anti-social behavior and soccer identities: different continents, same mindset?

Although most soccer fans support their teams peacefully, anti-social fan behavior continues to appear across the globe. We tested the roles of identity fusion and membership to an extreme fan group (ultras) in explaining fan disorder in two understudied contexts: Indonesia (Study 1) and Australia (Study 2). Incidents of violence and antisocial behavior were rarely reported among general Indonesian (9%) or Australian fans (6%) but were significantly higher among their respective ultras groups (37%; 20%). Identity fusion predicted antisocial behavior, especially when combined with fan group membership. Fusion explained anti-social behaviors better than identification or social dominance orientation. Understanding the motivators of intergroup violence is crucial to devise more effective ways of channeling cohesion among group members into peaceful forms of prosocial action.

The influence of kindness on academics' identity, well-being and stress

The well-being of people working and studying in higher education, including students, staff, and faculty, is a topic of increasing concern. The lack of well-being may be attributed to the current academic context, which does not consistently provide cues that affirm social inclusion to all members of the academic population. This study examines the role of kindness (defined as actions that affirm dignity and social inclusion) in promoting identification with community and well-being in higher education utilizing a cross-sectional study of 182 diverse members of higher education. To assess the extent that kindness relates to the acquisition of institutional identity, well-being, and stress, we developed and validated two novel psychometric rating scales for kindness: Kindness Received (α = 0.927, ώ = .921) and Kindness Given (α = .859, ώ = .860). Initial analysis showed that receiving kindness was significantly associated with increased well-being, reduced stress, and improved institutional identity. Giving kindness was significantly associated with decreased stress reduction and decreased institutional identity. Results from structural equation modeling shows that institutional identity mediates the relationship between receiving kindness and well-being. Qualitative analysis of micronarratives regarding kindness showed that feeling safe and being acknowledged are the most commonly described experiences of kindness, both acts that affirm dignity. The findings from this study suggests that kindness contributes towards improving diverse people's well-being and increased identification with institutions of higher education. Measurement of kindness provides methods for assessing institutional changes that foster greater positivity and inclusion in higher education settings.

Similarity enhances psychological compatibility: Serial mediation effect of psychological kinship and intergroup contact

Purpose

This study elucidates the relationship between similarity and ethnic psychological compatibility and its underlying psychological mechanisms. According to kin selection theory, similarity can promote ethnic psychological compatibility by enhancing psychological kinship and intergroup contact.

Participants

and methods: A questionnaire survey was administered to 1523 participants from 25 ethnic groups in China. Data analysis was carried out via conditional process modelling. A multigroup comparison of mediation models between the ethnic majority and minorities was detected via the Stats Tools Package.

Results

Our findings demonstrated that: (1) cultural and attitude similarity both showed a significant positive correlation with ethnic psychological compatibility; (2) psychological kinship and intergroup contact served as mediators in the relationship of attitude and cultural similarity with ethnic psychological compatibility and psychological kinship and intergroup contact were independent mediators, while psychological kinship-intergroup contact showed a significant serial mediation effect; (3) there were no significant differences in mediation effects between different ethnic groups.

Conclusion

Our findings expand on kin selection theory and provide valuable paths for psychologically supporting ethnic psychological compatibility.

How shared suffering bonded Britons witnessing the Queen's funeral

Previous research suggests that sharing emotionally intense experiences with others, for example by undergoing dysphoric collective rituals together, can lead to "identity fusion," a visceral feeling of oneness that predicts group cohesion and self-sacrifice for the group. In this pre-registered research, we provide the first quantitative investigation of identity fusion following participation in a national funeral, surveying 1632 members of the British public. As predicted, individuals reporting intense sadness during Queen Elizabeth II's funeral exhibited higher levels of identity fusion and pro-group commitment, as evidenced by generosity pledges to a British Monarchist charity. Also consistent with our hypotheses, feelings of unity in grief and emotional sharedness during the event mediated the relationship between sadness intensity and pro-group commitment. These findings shed light on importance of collective rituals in fostering group cohesion, cooperation, and the dynamics of shared emotional experiences within communities.

Batu Qulhu-The stone of death: Harmonizing traditional funerals in the Mandailing community of North Sumatra

Death and funeral rituals hold significant cultural and spiritual importance in traditional communities worldwide, including within the Islamic faith. This study focuses on exploring the unique funeral ritual known as Batu Qulhu in the Muslim Mandailing community. Employing a qualitative approach, the research utilizes field observations and interviews with ulama and imams who have practical knowledge and understanding of this traditional ritual. The study reveals two origin stories of Batu Qulhu: one attributed to the first Imam in the Mandailing community and the other associated with parents, ulama, and village malims (religious teachers) without specifying an individual source. Batu Qulhu refers to the white river stones utilized by the congregation during the ritual to count the number of prayers offered. The procession of this tradition follows a strict protocol, encompassing prayers, recitation of the Quran, and seeking forgiveness for the deceased and their family. The efficacy of Batu Qulhu serves as a testament to the cultural values of spirituality, tradition, and the preservation of cultural identity. While Batu Qulhu remembrance is specific to the Mandailing community, similar cultural practices can be observed in other regions, highlighting the universal human need to honor and remember the deceased, find solace in collective rituals, and uphold cultural traditions as an integral part of identity and social cohesion.

Exploring the origins of identity fusion: Shared emotional experience activates fusion with the group over time

Identity fusion is a visceral feeling of oneness with a group, known to strongly motivate extreme pro-group behaviour. However, the evidence on its causes is currently limited, primarily due to the prevalence of cross-sectional research. To address this gap, this study analysed the evolution of fusion in response to a massive collective ritual, Korrika-a race in support of the Basque language-, over three time periods: before (n = 748) and immediately following participation (n = 402), and 7 weeks thereafter (n = 273). Furthermore, we explored the potential mediating roles of two key factors: perceived emotional synchrony, a sense of emotional unity among participants that emerges during collective rituals, and kama muta (moved by love), an unexplored emotion in relation to fusion, which arises from feelings of shared essence. The proportion of fused participants increased significantly after participation and remained stable for at least 7 weeks. Perceived emotional synchrony and kama muta apparently explained the effect of participants' behavioural involvement in the ritual on subsequent fusion, but only among those who were not previously fused with Korrika participants. We conclude that emotional processes during collective rituals play a fundamental role in the construction of identity fusion.

Children's distinct drive to reproduce costly rituals

Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety-three 4-6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non-ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non-ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.

Institutional complexity emerges from socioecological complexity in small-scale human societies

Human lifestyles vary enormously over time and space and so understanding the origins of this diversity has always been a central focus of anthropology. A major source of this cultural variation is the variation in institutional complexity: the cultural packages of rules, norms, ontologies and expectations passed down through societies across generations. In this article, we study the emergence of institutions in small-scale societies. There are two primary schools of thought. The first is that institutions emerge top-down as rules are imposed by elites on their societies in order to gain asymmetrical access to power, resources and influence over others through coercion. The second is that institutions emerge bottom-up to facilitate interactions within populations as they seek collective solutions to adaptive problems. Here, we use Bayesian networks to infer the causal structure of institutional complexity in 172 small-scale societies across ethnohistoric western North America reflecting the wide diversity of indigenous lifestyles across this vast region immediately prior to European colonization. Our results suggest that institutional complexity emerges from underlying socioecological complexity because institutions are solutions to coordination problems in more complex environments where human-environment interactions require increased management.

Imagination vs. routines: festive time, weekly time, and the predictive brain

This paper examines the relationship between societal structures shaped by traditions, norms, laws, and customs, and creative expressions in arts and media through the lens of the predictive coding framework in cognitive science. The article proposes that both dimensions of culture can be viewed as adaptations designed to enhance and train the brain's predictive abilities in the social domain. Traditions, norms, laws, and customs foster shared predictions and expectations among individuals, thereby reducing uncertainty in social environments. On the other hand, arts and media expose us to simulated experiences that explore alternative social realities, allowing the predictive machinery of the brain to hone its skills through exposure to a wider array of potentially relevant social circumstances and scenarios. We first review key principles of predictive coding and active inference, and then explore the rationale of cultural traditions and artistic culture in this perspective. Finally, we draw parallels between institutionalized normative habits that stabilize social worlds and creative and imaginative acts that temporarily subvert established conventions to inject variability.

Religiosity and gender bias structure social networks

The number of studies examining gender differences in the social relationship rewards associated with costly religious practice has been surprisingly low. Here, we use data from 289 residents of an agricultural Tibetan village to assess whether individuals are more inclined to establish supportive relationships with religious individuals in general and to investigate the gender disparities in the relationship between religiosity and personal network characteristics. Our results reveal that participation in religious rituals contributes to the overall development of social support networks. The benefits to personal networks, however, seem to be contingent upon gender. For resource-intensive, infrequent religious rituals such as distant pilgrimages, males seem to benefit slightly more in terms of elevated in-degree values in their personal networks, despite similar levels of investment as females. In contrast, for daily, low-cost religious practices requiring ongoing participation, both genders obtain similar increases in in-degree values through regular engagement. It becomes more challenging for women to increase their status in communities when the effort invested in religious rituals yields smaller rewards compared with the same effort by men, contributing to ongoing gender inequality. These findings highlight the importance of examining the particular characteristics of religious rituals and the gender disparities in the associated rewards.

Why care for humanity?

Some of the most pressing challenges facing our planet-such as climate change, biodiversity loss, warfare and extreme poverty-require social cohesion and prosocial action on a global scale. How can this be achieved? Previous research suggests that identity fusion-a strong form of group cohesion motivating prosocial action-results from perceptions of shared personally transformative experiences or of common biological essence. Here, we present results from two studies with United States samples exploring each pathway to identity fusion on a global scale. Study 1 focused on globally shared motherhood experiences and found that US mothers were more fused with women around the world if they shared motherhood experiences with them, which was also reflected in money allocation behaviour. Study 2 showed that exposure to a talk about globally shared biology increased fusion with humanity at large, Americans and the extended family suggesting that fusion with humanity does not need to weaken fusion with nation or extended family. We discuss implications of our results for future research on bonding with humanity at large and for addressing collective action problems on a global scale.

Dance for the dead: The role of top-down beliefs for social cohesion and anxiety management in naturally occurring collective rituals

Collective rituals, particularly those characterized by synchrony and pain, have been shown to yield positive social and emotional outcomes. The question arises as to whether these findings extend to low-arousal, family-centered rituals and how spiritual beliefs factor into these communal practices. This study set out to examine the interplay between belief, ritual participation, and their effects on anxiety, social cohesion, and prosocial behavior during a low-arousal collective ritual in Mikasa, Japan. Drawing upon a sample of 183 festival participants, we measured belief in ancestors using a novel scale, identifying significant and consistent associations between these beliefs and measures of social cohesion across multiple targets. Moreover, active participation as a festival dancer displayed a positive relationship with feelings of social cohesion, particularly towards other festival attendees and at the national level. On measures of prosocial behavior, ancestral beliefs were positively associated with generosity shown within the festival setting, whereas observers were less generous towards community members than a non-attending control group. Anxiety outcomes displayed a negative relationship with ancestral beliefs and ritual observation but not participation as seen in previous research, suggesting a complex interplay between rituals, emotions, and individual states. These findings provide novel insights into the importance of belief systems and active participation in shaping social bonds and behaviors in the context of collective rituals.

Nostalgia, Ritual Engagement, and Meaning in Life

Rituals are pervasive and beneficial. Little is known, however, about causes or antecedents of ritual engagement. We hypothesized that nostalgia-a sentimental longing for one's past-promotes ritual engagement, which in turn augments meaning in life. We tested this hypothesis in five methodologically diverse studies. In Study 1 (N = 311), nostalgia was positively associated with ritual engagement. In Study 2 (N = 188), nostalgia promoted ritual engagement, and in Study 3 (N = 296), it did so over engagement in a neutral task. In Study 4 (N = 252), nostalgia predicted later ritual engagement but not vice versa, convergent with Studies 2 and 3. Furthermore, nostalgia prospectively predicted meaning in life through specific ritualistic behaviors during a traditional festival. Finally, in Study 5 (N = 166), experimentally manipulated ritual engagement augmented meaning in life. As hypothesized, nostalgia advances ritual engagement, contributing to a meaningful life.

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.

Synchronized affect in shared experiences strengthens social connection

People structure their days to experience events with others. We gather to eat meals, watch TV, and attend concerts together. What constitutes a shared experience and how does it manifest in dyadic behavior? The present study investigates how shared experiences-measured through emotional, motoric, physiological, and cognitive alignment-promote social bonding. We recorded the facial expressions and electrodermal activity (EDA) of participants as they watched four episodes of a TV show for a total of 4 h with another participant. Participants displayed temporally synchronized and spatially aligned emotional facial expressions and the degree of synchronization predicted the self-reported social connection ratings between viewing partners. We observed a similar pattern of results for dyadic physiological synchrony measured via EDA and their cognitive impressions of the characters. All four of these factors, temporal synchrony of positive facial expressions, spatial alignment of expressions, EDA synchrony, and character impression similarity, contributed to a latent factor of a shared experience that predicted social connection. Our findings suggest that the development of interpersonal affiliations in shared experiences emerges from shared affective experiences comprising synchronous processes and demonstrate that these complex interpersonal processes can be studied in a holistic and multi-modal framework leveraging naturalistic experimental designs.

Runaway signals: Exaggerated displays of commitment may result from second-order signaling

To demonstrate their commitment, for instance during wartime, members of a group will sometimes all engage in the same ruinous display. Such uniform, high-cost signals are hard to reconcile with standard models of signaling. For signals to be stable, they should honestly inform their audience; yet, uniform signals are trivially uninformative. To explain this phenomenon, we design a simple model, which we call the signal runaway game. In this game, senders can express outrage at non-senders. Outrage functions as a second-order signal. By expressing outrage at non-senders, senders draw attention to their own signal, and benefit from its increased visibility. Using our model and a simulation, we show that outrage can stabilize uniform signals, and can lead signal costs to run away. Second-order signaling may explain why groups sometimes demand displays of commitment from all their members, and why these displays can entail extreme costs.

Communicating with ethnic minorities during COVID-19: An experimental test of the effect of self-, ingroup-, and intergroup-focused messages

Developing messaging to encourage minorities to adhere to health recommendations has been a complex task for governments worldwide during the COVID-19 crisis. Here, we propose and tests a new typology of messages among minorities that can be used to mobilize compliance and engagement. This typology comprises three messaging treatments emphasizing personal, ingroup, and intergroup benefits. We examine, via an experimental field study, whether there is a difference in the effect of these messages on two policy outcomes, social distancing and vaccine hesitancy, among the Arab minority living in Israel. The findings suggest that social messages, i.e., ingroup and intergroup messages, positively affect social distancing, while self-messaging harms social distancing compliance. Regarding vaccine intake, within the social messages tested, intergroup-focused messages were more effective than ingroup-focused messages for vaccination intentions only among citizens with low trust in the government. We discuss the findings in detail and propose new avenues in theory and practice to foster health policy compliance among minorities.

Supernatural explanations across 114 societies are more common for natural than social phenomena

Humans across the globe use supernatural beliefs to explain the world around them. This article explores whether cultural groups invoke the supernatural more to explain natural phenomena (for example, storms, disease outbreaks) or social phenomena (for example, murder, warfare). Quantitative analysis of ethnographic text across 114 geographically and culturally diverse societies found that supernatural explanations are more prevalent for natural than for social phenomena, consistent with theories that ground the origin of religious belief in a human tendency to perceive intent and agency in the natural world. Despite the dominance of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, supernatural explanations of social phenomena were especially prevalent in urbanized societies with more socially complex and anonymous groups. Our results show how people use supernatural beliefs as explanatory tools in non-industrial societies, and how these applications vary across small-scale communities versus large and urbanized groups.

Positive Social Interaction and Psychological Kinship Mediate the Effect of Identity Fusion on Psychological Well-Being in South-South Migrants

The present study provides evidence of how positive social interaction and the perception of psychological kinship are mechanisms by which identity fusion with the host country is associated with the psychological well-being of Venezuelan migrants in Chile. The sample consisted of 323 Venezuelan migrants, of whom 147 (45.5%) were men. The participants were residents of the city of Santiago, Chile. The variables assessed were psychological well-being, identity fusion with host country, positive social interaction, and psychological kinship. Structural equation modeling was performed to estimate the proposed mediation model. The estimation method used was robust weighted least squares estimation. The first model showed that people who felt more fused with the host country had higher levels of psychological well-being. On the other hand, the second estimated model indicated that both positive social interaction and psychological kinship fully mediate the relationship between identity fusion with the host country and immigrants’ psychological well-being. It is not the mere sensation of feeling merged with the host country that increases the psychological well-being of migrants, but rather it is the positive social interactions and feeling that members of the host country are like family that are the components that link the fusion with the host country and the psychological well-being of Venezuelan migrants in Chile.

Preventive behaviours during the pandemic: The role of collective rituals, emotional synchrony, social norms and moral obligation

The present research focuses on the role of collective, social influence and intraindividual processes in shaping preventive behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. In two correlational studies conducted in Spain, we explored the impact of participation in the ritual of collective applause (carried out daily for over 70 days during the lockdown) and perceived social norms in fostering behavioural adherence to public health measures, as well as the mediating role of perceived emotional synchrony and a sense of moral obligation. The first study (general population, N = 528) was conducted in June 2020, just after the end of the lockdown, and the second study (students, N = 292) was carried out eight months later. The results of the structural equations modelling (SEM) consistently confirmed that active participation in collective applause was linked to more intense emotional synchrony and indirectly predicted self-reported preventive behaviour. Perceived social norms predicted self-reported behavioural compliance directly and also indirectly, via feelings of moral obligation. The discussion addresses some meaningful variations in the results and also focuses on the implications of the findings for both theory and psychosocial intervention.

A Psychology of Ideology: Unpacking the Psychological Structure of Ideological Thinking

The psychological study of ideology has traditionally emphasized the content of ideological beliefs, guided by questions about what people believe, such as why people believe in omniscient gods or fascist worldviews. This theoretical focus has led to siloed subdisciplines separately dealing with political, religious, moral, and prejudiced attitudes. The fractionation has fostered a neglect of the cognitive structure of ideological worldviews and associated questions about why ideologies-in all their forms-are so compelling to the human mind. Here I argue that it is essential to consider the nature of ideological cognition across a multitude of ideologies. I offer a multidimensional, empirically tractable framework of ideological thinking, suggesting it can be conceptualized as a style of thinking that is rigid in its adherence to a doctrine and resistance to evidence-based belief-updating and favorably oriented toward an in-group and antagonistic to out-groups. The article identifies the subcomponents of ideological thinking and highlights that ideological thinking constitutes a meaningful psychological phenomenon that merits direct scholarly investigation and analysis. By emphasizing conceptual precision, methodological directions, and interdisciplinary integration across the political and cognitive sciences, the article illustrates the potential of this framework as a catalyst for developing a rigorous domain-general psychology of ideology.

Genital Cutting as Gender Oppression: Time to Revisit the WHO Paradigm

The World Health Organization (WHO) condemns all medically unnecessary female genital cutting (FGC) that is primarily associated with people of color and the Global South, claiming that such FGC violates the human right to bodily integrity regardless of harm-level, degree of medicalization, or consent. However, the WHO does not condemn medically unnecessary FGC that is primarily associated with Western culture, such as elective labiaplasty or genital piercing, even when performed by non-medical practitioners (e.g., body artists) or on adolescent girls. Nor does it campaign against any form of medically unnecessary intersex genital cutting (IGC) or male genital cutting (MGC), including forms that are non-consensual or comparably harmful to some types of FGC. These and other apparent inconsistencies risk undermining the perceived authority of the WHO to pronounce on human rights. This paper considers whether the WHO could justify its selective condemnation of non-Western-associated FGC by appealing to the distinctive role of such practices in upholding patriarchal gender systems and furthering sex-based discrimination against women and girls. The paper argues that such a justification would not succeed. To the contrary, dismantling patriarchal power structures and reducing sex-based discrimination in FGC-practicing societies requires principled opposition to medically unnecessary, non-consensual genital cutting of all vulnerable persons, including insufficiently autonomous children, irrespective of their sex traits or socially assigned gender. This conclusion is based, in part, on an assessment of the overlapping and often mutually reinforcing roles of different types of child genital cutting—FGC, MGC, and IGC—in reproducing oppressive gender systems. These systems, in turn, tend to subordinate women and girls as well as non-dominant males and sexual and gender minorities. The selective efforts of the WHO to eliminate only non-Western-associated FGC exposes the organization to credible accusations of racism and cultural imperialism and paradoxically undermines its own stated goals: namely, securing the long-term interests and equal rights of women and girls in FGC-practicing societies.

Leverage the power of ritual to improve community health worker efficacy and public health outcomes: Lessons from Bihar, India

Biomedical health interventions now have global reach and interact in complex and often poorly understood ways with traditional medical rituals that precede biomedicine. People often experience biomedical practices and treatments as rituals because they are very similar from an experiential perspective.1 Yet the global public health community often views ritual practices of communities as obstacles to adopting new health-promoting behaviors. The lack of engagement with the biomedical and traditional medical rituals of local populations has obscured understanding the critical functions of these behaviors, limited the potential to leverage ritualization to increase behavioral uptake, and stymied social and behavioral change efforts. Our large-scale, mixed methods research with Community Health Workers (CHW) in Bihar, India, has shown that understanding the rituals of a community provides critical insight into their identities, norms, values, and goals. We propose that health interventions should be informed by, and build upon, knowledge of health rituals. A deep understanding of existing beliefs and behaviors will allow local health "influencers" such as CHW to encourage new and modified rituals that integrate the best of biomedical and traditional health practices in ways that preserve their meaning and shared purpose.

Funding

Grants INV-008582 and INV-016014 to C.L. from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded this manuscript.

Prosocial correlates of transformative experiences at secular multi-day mass gatherings

Humans have long sought experiences that transcend or change their sense of self. By weakening boundaries between the self and others, such transformative experiences may lead to enduring changes in moral orientation. Here we investigated the psychological nature and prosocial correlates of transformative experiences by studying participants before (n = 600), during (n = 1217), 0-4 weeks after (n = 1866), and 6 months after (n = 710) they attended a variety of secular, multi-day mass gatherings in the US and UK. Observations at 6 field studies and 22 online followup studies spanning 5 years showed that self-reported transformative experiences at mass gatherings were common, increased over time, and were characterized by feelings of universal connectedness and new perceptions of others. Participants' circle of moral regard expanded with every passing day onsite-an effect partially mediated by transformative experience and feelings of universal connectedness. Generosity was remarkably high across sites but did not change over time. Immediately and 6 months following event attendance, self-reported transformative experience persisted and predicted both generosity (directly) and moral expansion (indirectly). These findings highlight the prosocial qualities of transformative experiences at secular mass gatherings and suggest such experiences may be associated with lasting changes in moral orientation.

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.

Living in a World With God: An Interpretative Phenomenological Exploration of the Religious Experiences of Five Baptists in Britain

Religious and spiritual experiences often form significant elements of people's narratives about their faith and lives, but the impact of these experiences is often neglected in academic studies. This study investigated the connections between perceived experiences of God and beliefs in the lives of five members of a Baptist church in Britain, using data from semi-structured interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to explore the data and develop 11 recurrent sub-themes, organized into two super-ordinate themes: "Knowing God" and "Living in the World." There were idiosyncratic differences between the experiences of the participants, but they all perceived God communicating with them and attributed certain events to God's influence. These experiences developed real and meaningful relationships with God, and the participants' faith affected every aspect of their lives, shaping their actions, beliefs and daily lived experiences. The participants' diverse experiences and beliefs created mutually supporting meaning systems (or worldviews) that were much stronger than the individual elements that contributed to them. God was an intrinsic part of the participants' social reality, and their lived experiences cannot be adequately understood without appreciating the influence of this central aspect of their lives. These findings show the importance of taking a holistic and idiographic perspective when studying religiosity and spirituality. The study also demonstrates IPA is a useful and effective tool for studying lived experiences of religiosity and spirituality and supports its broader use to investigate such phenomena.

The sense of agency in joint action: An integrative review

When people perform joint actions together, their individual actions (e.g., moving one end of a heavy couch) must be coordinated to achieve a collective goal (e.g., moving the couch across the room). Joint actions pose unique challenges for understanding people's sense of agency, because each person engaged in the joint action can have a sense of agency not only at the individual level (a sense that "I moved my end of the couch" or "My partner moved their end of the couch"), but also at the collective level (a sense that "We moved the couch together"). This review surveys research that has examined people's sense of agency in joint action, including explicit judgments of agency, implicit measures of agency, and first-hand accounts of agency in real-world settings. The review provides a comprehensive summary of the factors that influence individual- and collective-level agency in joint action; reveals the progress that has been made toward understanding different forms of collective-level agency in joint action, including the sense that agency is shared among co-actors and the sense that co-actors are acting as a single unit; and synthesizes evidence concerning the relationships between different measures of implicit agency and individual- versus collective-level agency in joint action. The review concludes by highlighting numerous outstanding questions and promising avenues for future research.

Pain as Social Glue: A Preregistered Direct Replication of Experiment 2 of Bastian et al. (2014)

Bastian et al. (2014) found that sharing a painful experience promoted later intergroup cooperation. In Bastian et al.'s second experiment, 62 participants were assigned to groups of two to six people each. They performed either two painful or two painless tasks and then played an economic game. The present study consisted of two replications of the experiment: The first was a nonpreregistered pilot study (N = 153 students from the Czech Republic), and the second was a preregistered direct replication (N = 158 students from Slovakia). Important deviations from the original procedure were that (a) gender homogeneity of the small groups was balanced across the conditions and (b) the number of participants in each small group was fixed at three. No relevant effect of shared pain on cooperation emerged. The findings indicate that the true effect of shared pain on cooperation obtained in the original study may have been an overestimate or that the effect is not generally valid across various contexts.

Being in a crowd bonds people via physiological synchrony

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.

Agency and Identity in the Collective Self

Contemporary research on human sociality is heavily influenced by the social identity approach, positioning social categorization as the primary mechanism governing social life. Building on the distinction between agency and identity in the individual self ("I" vs. "Me"), we emphasize the analogous importance of distinguishing collective agency from collective identity ("We" vs. "Us"). While collective identity is anchored in the unique characteristics of group members, collective agency involves the adoption of a shared subjectivity that is directed toward some object of our attention, desire, emotion, belief, or action. These distinct components of the collective self are differentiated in terms of their mental representations, neurocognitive underpinnings, conditions of emergence, mechanisms of social convergence, and functional consequences. Overall, we show that collective agency provides a useful complement to the social categorization approach, with unique implications for multiple domains of human social life, including collective action, responsibility, dignity, violence, dominance, ritual, and morality.

The Ape That Lived to Tell the Tale. The Evolution of the Art of Storytelling and Its Relationship to Mental Time Travel and Theory of Mind

Engaging in the art of creating and telling stories is a defining behaviour of humankind. Humans have been sharing stories with each other, with and without words, since the dawn of recorded history, but the cognitive foundations of the behaviour can be traced deeper into our past. The emergence of stories can be strongly linked to Mental Time Travel (the ability to recall the past and imagine the future) and plays a key role in our ability to communicate past, present and future scenarios with other individuals, within and beyond our lifetimes. Stories are products engraved within the concept of time, constructed to elucidate the past experiences of the self, but designed with the future in mind, thus imparting lessons of such experiences to the receiver. By being privy to the experiences of others, humans can imagine themselves in a similar position to the protagonist of the story, thus mentally learning from an experience they might have never encountered other than in the mind's eye. Evolutionary Psychology investigates how the engagement in artistic endeavours by our ancestors in the Pleistocene granted them an advantage when confronted with obstacles that challenged their survival or reproductive fitness and questions whether art is an adaptation of the human mind or a spandrel of other cognitive adaptations. However, little attention has been placed on the cognitive abilities that might have been imperative for the development of art. Here, we examine the relationship between art, storytelling, Mental Time Travel and Theory of Mind (i.e., the ability to attribute mental states to others). We suggest that Mental Time Travel played a key role in the development of storytelling because through stories, humans can fundamentally transcend their present condition, by being able to imagine different times, separate realities, and place themselves and others anywhere within the time space continuum. We argue that the development of a Theory of Mind also sparked storytelling practises in humans as a method of diffusing the past experiences of the self to others whilst enabling the receiver to dissociate between the past experiences of others and their own, and to understand them as lessons for a possible future. We propose that when artistic products rely on storytelling in form and function, they ought to be considered separate from other forms of art whose appreciation capitalise on our aesthetic preferences.

Indicators of Identity and Psychological Well-Being in Immigrant Population

Multiple research has indicated that group identity processes are critical to understanding the dynamics of psychological well-being linked to migration. However, few studies have analyzed the relationship between identity from different theoretical perspectives, and the mental health of migrants in the Latin-American context. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between several identity indicators such as ethnic identity, collective self-esteem, identity fusion (with the country of origin and the host country) simultaneously, and different dimensions of psychological well-being of Colombian migrants living in Chile. The sample consisted of 887 Colombian migrants, of whom 435 (49%) were men and 452 (51%) were women. Participants were residents of the cities of Arica (n=204; 23%), Antofagasta (n=469; 52.9%), and Santiago (n=214; 24.1%) in Chile. The results revealed by structural equation modeling indicate that collective self-esteem and ethnic identity show positive relationships with almost all dimensions of psychological well-being, while identity fusion with Colombia only showed a positive relationship with the dimension positive relationships and identity fusion with Chile only showed a positive relationship with the dimension autonomy. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed at the end.

Why do people self-sacrifice for their country? The roles of identity fusion and empathic concern

Identity fusion with a group, a feeling of connection with it, is a good predictor of extreme pro-group behavior, an action to favor or protect the group, including self-sacrifice. Relational ties and personal distress (self-oriented emotional reaction; e.g., anxiety, distress) toward ingroup members in need have been evaluated separately as mediators of the relationship between identity fusion and pro-group self-sacrifice. Another mediator could be empathic concern (other-oriented emotional reaction; e.g., compassion, sympathy), but it has not been considered in the literature. We related those three mediators in a model. The objective was to analyze whether relational ties mediate the relationship between identity fusion and pro-country self-sacrifice whereas both empathic concern and personal distress mediate the association between relational ties and pro-country self-sacrifice. We expected that identity fusion with the country leads to more relational ties, which in turn evokes both empathic concern and personal distress, and those emotional reactions promote more and less pro-country self-sacrifice, respectively, with more effect of empathic concern than personal distress. We considered the country as the group reference because it is the most used in identity fusion research. In a sample of university students (N = 539), the results supported this model: Identity fusion promoted relational ties, which in turn evoked empathic concern and personal distress. Then, the last two variables predicted more and less self-sacrifice, respectively, with more effect of empathic concern than personal distress. We discussed the theoretical implications of the model, especially the relationship of identity fusion with empathic concern and personal distress-traditional explanations for pro-group behavior-considering the different motivations associated to both emotional reactions. Despite the limitations associated with the measurements, the data supported the model that relates variables not previously explored jointly.

Elements of Neuroanthropology

Neuroanthropology is the integration of neuroscience into anthropology and aims to understand “brains in the wild.” This interdisciplinary field examines patterns of human variation in field settings and provides empirical research that complements work done in clinical and laboratory settings. Neuroanthropology often uses ethnography in combination with theories and methods from cognitive science as a way to capture how culture, mind, and brain interact. This article describes nine elements that outline how to do neuroanthropology research: (1) integrating biology and culture through neuroscience and biocultural anthropology; (2) extending focus of anthropology on what people say and do to include what people process; (3) sizing culture appropriately, from broad patterns of culture to culture in small-scale settings; (4) understanding patterns of cultural variation, in particular how culture produces patterns of shared variation; (5) considering individuals in interaction with culture, with levels of analysis that can go from biology to social structures; (6) focusing on interactive elements that bring together biological and cultural processes; (7) conceptual triangulation, which draws on anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience in conjunction with field, clinic, and laboratory; (8) critical complementarity as a way to integrate the strengths of critical scholarship with interdisciplinary work; and (9) using methodological triangulation as a way to advance interdisciplinary research. These elements are illustrated through three case studies: research on US combat veterans and how they use Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a way to manage the transition to becoming civilians, work on human-raptor interactions to understand how and why these interactions can prove beneficial for human handlers, and adapting cue reactivity research on addiction to a field-based approach to understand how people interact with cues in naturalistic settings.