Journal article
How shared suffering bonded Britons witnessing the Queen’s funeral
- Abstract:
- 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.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.3MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-024-66537-5
Authors
+ Templeton Religion Trust
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02q53mk25
- Grant:
- TRT-2021-10490
- Programme:
- The Persistence of “Wild” Religious Traditions
+ European Research Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0472cxd90
- Grant:
- 694986
- Programme:
- Ritual Modes: Divergent modes of ritual, social cohesion, prosociality, and conflict
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 16620
- Publication date:
- 2024-07-18
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-07-02
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2045-2322
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2017475
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2017475
- Source identifiers:
-
2122761
- Deposit date:
-
2024-07-19
This ORA record was generated from metadata provided by an external service. It has not been edited by the ORA Team.
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- White et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 2024 The Authors. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Notes:
- This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2024
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record