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Testing novel measures of ritual experiences, attachment and self-transformation and their roles for identity fusion and pro-group attitudes and behaviours

Humans are a highly social species that need to maintain meaningful social connections for survival and well-being throughout their lifetimes (Hrdy, 2009; Tomasello, 2014). The need for social connections becomes even more prominent when people are faced with threatening, stressful or uncertain situations (Dezecache, 2015; Dezecache et al., 2017). However, the COVID-19 pandemic imposes a particular challenge to maintaining social connections, as minimising physical contact with others is widely advised (and sometimes enforced by authorities) as one of the most effective measures to alleviate the spread of the virus (WHO, 2020). This study aims to answer two key questions: (1) How do people around the world adapt their social interactions to the COVID-19 context? (2) Are certain modes of interaction under conditions of lockdown better for people’s well-being? We aim to examine these questions by taking into account differences in cross-cultural values (e.g., collectivism), personal traits (e.g., empathy), and demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, employment status etc.). Anthropological and social-psychological research suggests that as a factor of the need for affiliation, and time- and memory-based restrictions on the social brain, humans have a social network size of around 150 (Hill & Dunbar, 2003), with different layers of networks (i.e., networks of 5, 15, 50, 150 individuals) embedded within this large network. Relationships in closer layers are marked by individuals coming to each other’s aid without the need for reciprocity. These layers of networks are determined by both perceived emotional closeness and frequency of interaction. Dunbar (2012) outlined how the Internet, including social media networks and text-based messaging, may allow us to circumnavigate the time- and memory-based restrictions the social brain has around social contact numbers. Specifically, these tools may increase the frequency of interactions by mass messaging, and thereby help us to maintain a larger number of weaker quality relationships than our typical 150-people quota. Importantly, the number of social media contacts one has (e.g., Facebook friends) does not equate to the number of people in one’s social clique (i.e., closest layer of n = 5 people) or sympathy groups (i.e., second-closest layer of n = 15 people). Arguably, this is because interacting through social media cannot replace the quality of face to face (FTF) interactions (Dunbar, 2016). Indeed, feelings of connectedness between friendship pairs is strongest after in-person interaction, then video chat, then audio chat, and finally text-based messaging (Sherman et al., 2013). However, those friendships that report using video or audio modes more frequently are able bond via these respective modes more than those who use them less, suggesting that practice is important. Text-based communication, which is most common among young people, produces the weakest bonding, though bonding via this mode can be increased by the use of cues such as emoticons and typed laughter. During lockdown, maintaining strong relationships is likely to prove challenging as modes of contact become limited. Previous research has supported Knock’s (2005) media naturalness hypothesis, by suggesting that FTF appears to be different from all other forms of communication (video chat, phone, instant messaging, text, email), in that duration of FTF contact positively relates to happiness (Vlahovic et al., 2012). This may be because our ancestors evolved using facial and vocal cues as well as bodily language that is only picked up in close proximity. Too little of these cues is underwhelming, but too much stimulation (e.g., VR) could be overwhelming and damaging to relationships. To date, little research has been done to see what effects on wellbeing modes of contact have across cultures. The high social costs the COVID-19 pandemic is anticipated to cause (WHO, 2020) creates a unique opportunity to investigate what effects on wellbeing disrupted modes of contact have across cultures, which we address here. In addition, we tackle whether FTF contact is still the optimal mode of contact under conditions of ‘lockdown’.

Like so many countries, the socio-psychological effects of lockdown are anticipated to be significant in the UK (Lee, 2020; WHO, 2020). Football fans are an interesting case study as the lockdown has involved a restriction of the rituals and social interactions that play an important role in people’s feelings of belonging, and which can provide group identities and support networks as important as family to some fans (Newson et al., 2018). One aspect of anxiety around coronavirus manifests as hopelessness (Lee, 2020), a response we proposed to investigate among fans of UK football teams.

This registration includes the conceptual background, hypothesis, predictions and proposed analysis for an online study on how the formidability of (football) synchronous chants is perceived in comparison to asynchronous chants and its potential effects on pro/anti-social behavior.

Despite the Criminal Justice and Public Law Act (1994), which attempted to put an end to the spate of new, unregulated raves that were popping up around the M25 and Manchester a quarter of a century ago, rave culture is very much alive and kicking. Throughout lockdown, ‘free parties’ and underground raves have been taking place across the UK and mainland Europe (Mahmood, 2021). In a world of increasing physical distance (first through social media, then via COVID-19 related restrictions), rave culture appears to be growing. Humankind has a deep-seated need to engage in bonding group rituals (Durkheim, 1912; Atran & Heinrich, 2010). The 2020’s rave generation is being drawn in to not just a subculture, but to perhaps the only space left available in which to partake in those rituals we so crave. This year, the combination of covid-related restrictions and the repercussions of years of austerity has activated our evolved need to turn to others in the face of adversity (Dezecache, 2015; Dezecache et al., 2020). During the pandemic, and following years of austerity, unemployment and mental health issues have soared among young people. Rave is a reflection of this – temporarily remedying their imposed isolation. At its heart, the rave phenomenon - young people gathering to dance all night - is millennia old (Winkelman, 2010). Hedonistic revel and revolt are not the primary goal for ravers; feeling a connection with other people, being part of something bigger than oneself is the motivation (Gauthier, 2004). In other cultural worlds, this kind of deep and meaningful connection might be met by religion, by one’s career, or maybe by one’s own family (Turner & Oakes, 1985). Combinations of all of these social connections and more are also possible. However, with the ongoing ambiguities of national identity perpetuated by Brexit, and the stifling of community life due to the pandemic, rave is filling this gap in social meaning for many young people. Young people may not be going to church on a Sunday (even if they were allowed to), but they’re making up for it on Saturday night by receiving the sacred communion of religious ecstasy on the dancefloor until the sun comes up. However, now, more than ever, rave is costly. While hosts may charge their guests £5 to £30+, the social cost is arguably far higher. The risk of COVID-19 transmission is a big concern, especially in potentially unventilated venues that operate for 12+ hours. As with other illegal events, raves pose risks that health and safety inspectors would weep over (for an extreme example, consider the ‘rave cave’ that took place in an Oslo bunker, giving its ravers carbon monoxide poisoning). Relatedly, drug dealing and associated drug casualties at raves are also a concern, though numbers are relatively low, especially when compared to alcohol-related injuries and deaths. These stories generate sensationalised media headlines, much as rule breaking among religious groups and indeed the general population has (Drury and Reicher, 2021). Rule breaking actually appears to occur in the minority of the population, around 10% (Fancourt et al., 2020; Duffy & Aldington, 2020). We predict that rule breaking concerning communal rituals (raves and large religious rituals) will be no greater for ravers and religious people than general rule breaking is in the wider population. Even though it may be a minority who break the rules, it is still imperative that we understand their motives. One possible explanation for these risky behaviours comes from evolutionary Life History Theory. All mammals have evolved, species-specific slower or faster life history strategies in relation to what is optimal given their environment. All animals have to allocate finite resources between survival, growth, reproduction, or parenting (Stearns 2004, Chisholm 1993). For instance, a mouse adopts a fast life history strategy having several large litters, with relatively low investment in each, whereas an elephant tends to produce one infant per pregnancy and provides high levels of (maternal) investment, which is considered a slow strategy. In humans, species-specific life history strategies are slow but there is individual, intraspecies variation between the timing of life history events that develops from environmental unpredictability, whereby we can classify individuals as being slower or faster compared to others (Figueredo et al. 2005). Faster life history strategies in humans may involve earlier sexual debut, having children at younger age, risk taking, and drug use (e.g., Ellis et al. 2012). These strategies are often associated with high stress, unpredictable environments (such as a ghetto or war-torn region) where the risk of drying before reproducing is increased, but have also been found in more benign environments where relative perception of environmental risk is high (Johns 2011). Slower strategies would include having fewer children later in life, but high levels of parental investment (e.g. spending a lot of time on their educational activities) and favoring parental effort over mating effort - these strategies are associated with safe, secure environments with more chance of reaching old age. Life history strategies have not previously been linked to rave culture or shared ritual attendance more broadly (but see Shaver and Sosis 2014). However, religiosity and spirituality have been associated, in general, to longer-term decision making (Slyke and Wasemiller 2017, Holder et al. 2000). Opportunities to meet with peers at mass events are important for mating opportunities, enhancement of social capital, as well as feelings of belonging and well-being – benefits that are likely of particular import to those in unpredictable environments. Additionally, participation in mass rituals signals commitment to the group, and well as pro-sociality; and being an enthusiastic participant is hard to fake (Henrich 2009). Where long-term survival is less likely and the future uncertain, it makes sense to engage in high-risk, high reward activities, especially if they enhance the potential for mating success (e.g. Mishra et al 2017) and sustained group ties (Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2014; Whitehouse et al., 2017). Similarly, those sustained group ties, i.e. identity fusion, may be a driving force for continued participation in group rituals (Swann et al., 2009, 2012). Here we test the possibility that raves constitute a mass, ritual gathering for young people - one that may be particularly important to young people with faster life history trajectories. We also control for this by investigating a legal, control group of religious people who regularly participate in religious activities which share some of the same characteristics and benefits as rave (St John, 2004). Ordinarily the major world religions are linked to slower LHS (Baumard & Chevallier, 2015; Moon et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2020). Within the pandemic environment, however, some religious rituals are now more suited to faster LHS, i.e. religious activities that have continued to attract large crowds such as within London’s Hasidic Jewish community that currently has the highest rate of COVID-19 in the world (Farley & Symonds, 2021). Often, the ‘need’ for these large religious rituals is expressed as a need for the communal, much as rave is.

Humans have come together for exalted, communal experiences involving music, dance, and psychedelic substances for millenia. Their cumulative effect leads ritual participants to feel a sense of meaning; of coming together as a group or tribe, i.e. ‘collective effervescence’ (Durkheim, 1912) or ‘communitas’ (Turner, 1969). One of the main consequences of such collective gatherings is a unifying of participants, or social bonding (Savage et al., 2020; Block, 2020). What helps individuals to experience the group as bigger than its individual parts is liminality (Turner, 1969; van Gennep, 1909/1960), or going beyond culturally normal modes of social interaction. Ritual liminality is created by a number of identifiable human behaviours, including what we term ‘The 4 D’s’, which are: (1) repetitive music or drums (Savage et al., 2020); (2) dancing (Lewis-Williams, 1992); (3) drugs, including psychedelics (Hood, 2014); and (4) sleep deprivation (Dahl, 2013). This suite of behaviours are powerful enough to alter our state of consciousness and take a group far away from its conventional realms of normality (or the profane), and into the surreal and sacred. Importantly, this gives group members an opportunity to transcend the boundaries between self and group by sharing a transformative experience with other group members (Newson et al., 2016; Jong et al., 2017; Buhrmester et al., 2018). Transcending to the sacred plane via liminal group experiences has been common in religious rituals (Dunbar, 2013), but this cognitive toolkit is also exploited by the secular, for instance at large music gatherings (Turner, 1969) or raves (Gautheir, 2004). Of these collective rituals, the rave is a relatively recent, but seemingly enduring subcultural phenomenon. The exhaustive all-night (or weekend-long) dancing, engulfing repetitive bass beats, and, often heavy psychedelic drug use, constructs a potent liminal space with the potential to generate intense and lasting social bonds, establishing a collective effervescence unparalleled for many young initiates (Gauthier, 2004). Through the use of liminality, rave culture is able to access a ‘sacred’ realm in which ravers may experience communitas in an engagement familiar to ritual devotees all over the world. During raves, the use of self-prescribed psychedelic drugs may elevate liminality and, in turn, lead to increased social connectedness. Psychedelic experiences are often characterized by a reduced sense of the self (Yaden et al., 2017), or even more extreme, ego dissolution, whereby the boundaries of the ego are temporarily disrupted (Milliere, 2017). During ego dissolution, the self is felt to be integrated into a greater whole, and an increased feeling of unity with one’s surroundings is experienced (Nour et al., 2016). However, recent research has demonstrated that psychedelic experiences involving strong feelings of awe, but not necessarily ego dissolution, were associated with increased levels of connectedness to humanity and nature up to five years after the event (van Mulukom et al., 2020). Importantly, this effect was driven by the ‘feelings of connectedness’ awe subscale, rather than by ‘self-diminishment’ or ‘perceived vastness’ subscales. This suggests that a more fine-grained investigation of liminality following psychedelic drug use is necessary. Moreover, the study did not measure the strength of social connections between psychedelic-taking co-participants, which begs the question of the more immediate bonds psychedelic drugs can induce. Previous research suggests that experiencing highly emotional, significant events together creates a particularly strong and visceral type of bonding, called identity fusion (Whitehouse et al., 2017). Examples of such events include fighting on the frontline (Whitehouse et al., 2014), experiencing a traumatic childbirth (Tasuji et al., 2020), and even watching a major football match (Newson et al., 2016). What is common to these events is that they contain strong, emotional experiences that are personally transformative (Newson et al., 2016), and which are perceived to be similarly transformative for fellow participants (Buhrmester et al., 2018; Whitehouse, 2018). Here we suggest that events with high liminality may be another type of event that reliably induces bonding between its participants. Moreover, we suggest that psychedelics may be particularly apt at inducing this state. The consequences of intense shared rituals in terms of connectedness and prosocial behaviour have not yet been tested empirically in relation to psychedelic consumption. Here, we will examine these questions in an online survey with a large sample (projected participant recruitment, N = 500) of self-identified ‘ravers’ who have attended legal and illegal ‘free parties’ and raves. We target these individuals through online networks of ravers in the UK.

Additional file 1.

Why do we adopt new rules, such as social distancing? Although human sciences research stresses the key role of social influence in behaviour change, most COVID‐19 campaigns emphasize the disease’s medical threat. In a global data set (n = 6,674), we investigated how social influences predict people’s adherence to distancing rules during the pandemic. Bayesian regression analyses controlling for stringency of local measures showed that people distanced most when they thought their close social circle did. Such social influence mattered more than people thinking distancing was the right thing to do. People’s adherence also aligned with their fellow citizens, but only if they felt deeply bonded with their country. Self‐vulnerability to the disease predicted distancing more for people with larger social circles. Collective efficacy and collectivism also significantly predicted distancing. To achieve behavioural change during crises, policymakers must emphasize shared values and harness the social influence of close friends and family.

The US Presidential Inauguration is a symbolic event which arouses significant emotional responses among diverse groups, and is of considerable significance to Americans’ personal and social identities. We argue that the inauguration qualifies as an Imagistic Ritual (Whitehouse, 2004). Such ritual experiences are thought to produce identity fusion: a visceral sense of oneness with the group. The 2017 Inauguration of President Trump was a unique opportunity to examine how a large-scale naturalistic imagistic ritual influences the social identities of Americans who supported and opposed President Trump. We conducted a pre-registered 7-week longitudinal investigation among an online sample of Americans in order to examine how President Trump’s Inauguration influenced identity fusion. One core prediction was that the affective responses to the inauguration would predict positive changes in fusion, mediated by self-reflection. We did not find support for this. However, the inauguration was associated with flashbulb-like memories, and positive emotional response at the time of the event predicted changes in fusion to both ingroup and outgroup targets. Finally, both positive and negative emotional responses inspired self-reflection, but did not mediate the relationship with fusion. We discuss the implications of our findings for models linking group psychology, fusion theory, and ritual modes. All material available at the Open Science Framework: https://bit.ly/2Qu0G37.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-nms-10.1177_14614448211062164 for Digital contact does not promote wellbeing, but face-to-face contact does: A cross-national survey during the COVID-19 pandemic by Martha Newson, Yi Zhao, Marwa El Zein, Justin Sulik, Guillaume Dezecache, Ophelia Deroy and Bahar Tun��gen�� in New Media & Society