Residents of San Pedro Manrique, Spain, huddled in front of a runway of smoking coals, gather strength as thousands of spectators cheer them on. The crowd roars as they walk across the fire, sometimes carrying another person on their back.
Although the pedestrians and the crowd perform very different roles during the annual Juneteenth ritual, they report similar feelings: an indescribable feeling of togetherness“It’s as if the whole group becomes one,” said Dimitris Xygalatas, a cognitive anthropologist at the University of Connecticut who witnessed the Spanish ritual as a researcher years ago.
He experienced similar feelings in the stadium, chanting and cheering 30,000 fans of his hometown football team. Both are examples of collective excitement, says Xygalatas, author of Rituals: How Seemingly Meaningless Activities Make Life Worth Living.
It is the feeling that occurs when people engage in meaningful activities together that evoke positive emotions. For example, when you get goosebumps at a concert, feel an adrenaline rush at a group class, or get excited about religious holidays.
Recently, collective arousal has come to be called the “we mode,” and it's something you can cultivate to improve your life, says Kelly McGonigal, a clinical psychologist at Stanford University.
“When you bond over shared positive emotions, their expressions often act like an aerosolized joy as you pick up on other people's smiles, laughter and physical expressions,” McGonigal said. “It's becoming contagious.”
“We're in mode” is also called physiological synchronicity, and McGonigal calls it “collective joy.” This concept was documented over a century ago by French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who described the cultural upsurge after studying Aboriginal society in Australia.
Xygalatas's research has focused on its measurement in various group activities. To quantify “autonomic responses,” he fitted people with heart monitors and electrodes and extracted thousands of frames from videos to analyze facial expressions.
He discovered that people's physiological responses synchronize during exciting events. For example, the heartbeats of sports fans who attend a game are synchronized, but the heartbeats of fans watching the same game on television are not. Fans of the game also have higher levels of endorphins, which are associated with bonding, he said.
At a basic level, collective rituals involve meeting and connecting with people, which is key to psychological well-being, Xygalatas noted.
“If we all dress the same, move the same and feel the same, we express the same emotions, which trigger mechanisms in our brain,” Xygalatas said. “There is a fundamental need for synchronicity.”
What types of activities should you look for to tap into “we mode”? McGonigal, who studied the science of emotions and wrote The Joy of Movement about the emotional benefits of exercise, called these criteria:
The activity must be personal. McGonigal noted that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, people trying to recreate positive interactions online had a more difficult time than in person.
“If you're not physically present among people, a lot of the cues that create a shared state just aren't there,” she said.
It also helps to make noise and move your body, whether you're clapping, moving, dancing or singing. McGonigal said you're more likely to feel communal joy when you're dancing with people than when you're sitting in a theater watching a dance performance.
Also, try to get rid of the shame and embarrassment and get busy. Passive observers don't get the same benefit, McGonigal said.
“At a sporting event, you have to make a wave,” she said. “If you're in a group exercise class and your instructor says, 'Can I get a whoop, whoop?' You need a whoop.
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Albert Stumm writes about health, food and travel. Find his work on https://www.albertstumm.com
