An Ancient Solution to Modern Problems | Hidden Brain Media

When people moved in synchrony, their endorphin levels were higher

 

Rituals are characterized by repetition, rigidity and redundancy. 

When a crowd feels a sense of one-ness with each other:

"Émile Durkheim described this feeling of collective effervescence... What we found is that during the ritual, their heart rates began to synchronize to a really impressive degree. In fact, they were more synchronous during the ritual where some of them are walking on fire, some are watching, some are preparing for their own walk. They were more synchronous during that time than the time they were marching up the hill in synchrony. But we also find that this effect only holds for group members, because we also mapped the social network of the village. So we knew who was related to whom and to what degree, whether by blood or by friendship. And we see that we can actually use the degree of social proximity to predict the degree of physiological synchrony."

https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/an-ancient-solution-to-modern-problems/