Creating the sacred from the profane: Collective effervescence and everyday activities

ABSTRACT

The current research examines the hypothesis that collective effervescence – the sense of connection and meaning that comes from collective events – is not just useful for understanding rare, unusual, and intense collective events, but also as a framework for understanding how seemingly insignificant and/or common collective gatherings (i.e. ‘everyday events’) may give meaning, a sense of connection, and joy to life. We found evidence for our hypothesis across nine different studies utilizing eleven datasets and over 2500 participants. The first three studies found that collective effervescence is best understood as a combination of feeling connected to others and a sensation of sacredness. The next four studies found that collective effervescence is found in common, everyday kinds of events and that it is related to various aspects of enjoying group activities. The last two studies found that collective effervescent experiences are common; three quarters of people experience collective effervescence at least once a week and a third experience them every day. Moreover, commonly experiencing collective effervescence predicts wellbeing above and beyond the effects of other kinds of social connection. Results are discussed in terms of the human need for social connection and the importance of groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective effervescence
• need to belong
• social motivations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Some of the datasets were collected alongside other studies with goals not relevant to the current paper. Measures that are unrelated are not reported here but are listed in full in the supplementary materials.

2. The following five measures are single items which were originally included in each dataset as one of the 18 items assessed for inclusion in the SCE scale. However, these items did not consistently load with either factor and therefore are here used as measures of independent but related constructs. These measures include: being lost in the moment, enjoying the event, connections to others not there, synchronized behavior, and feeling wonder and amazement during the event.

3. Most participants in the floating control were also participants in datasets 1 or dataset 2 (utilized in Studies 1a and 1c). They participated in the floating control after completing measures relevant to scale construction.

4. The predictions for Studies 2a – 2d developed as the data were collected. When we began this research, we assumed that collective effervescence would only occur in the kind of rarified circumstances in which it is normally discussed. However, after two of the studies were collected, we refined our predictions based on collected data and ran the last two studies to examine the new hypotheses. In addition, Studies 3a and 3b were collected to specifically examine the new hypotheses.

5. Several of these measures were included among the original 18 items examined for possible inclusion in the SCE scale. None of them were included in the final scale.

6. In order to strategically utilize experimental resources, participants in Study 2d were also in dataset 4 (that was used for scale validation). Participants completed all of the measures relevant to scale validation first and then the measures relevant used for Study 4. No variables or analyses were used for both studies; the same participants were simply in both studies.