No, i don’t think shouting “doom doom doom” will work. Neither am i convinced that singing and dancing in general will yield better effects than other fun group activities – and even if they do, there are probably methods that are far more effective than some kind of singing or dancing that is picked at random or for fun.
Why do i think so? 1) Personal experience: I have experienced my share of singing, dancing and more or less synchronous movement; some of it caused some feeling of beeing part of the group or a larger social beeing in me, but most didn’t. 2) The examples for strong effects seem all to occur under some very specific conditions: techno, ritual tribal dance, military marches. Very different from the usual singing and dancing.
The question is: What are the conditions that cause strong feelings of group bonding?
So far i have come up with:
The activity has a strong symbolic connection to the group identity
The activity is connected with the pursue of a common goal (example: shouting slogans on political demonstations)
a short, simple rythm (“Ho, ho, ho chi minh!”)
Drums
connection of movement with shouting or clapping or some other kind of noise.
Each participant makes the sound (instead of just some drummers in the mass)
the more participants, the stronger the effect (there is probably a critical mass)
In addition, the singing and dancing needs to be part of a system that integrates different methods of building group bonding.
Moreover, all of this is nearly worthless, unless the group has some real substance, such as common goals, a group identity, solidarity.
Which leads to the question: What kind of solidarity, unity, group identity do we want to create? Why?
No, i don’t think shouting “doom doom doom” will work. Neither am i convinced that singing and dancing in general will yield better effects than other fun group activities – and even if they do, there are probably methods that are far more effective than some kind of singing or dancing that is picked at random or for fun.
Why do i think so?
1) Personal experience: I have experienced my share of singing, dancing and more or less synchronous movement; some of it caused some feeling of beeing part of the group or a larger social beeing in me, but most didn’t.
2) The examples for strong effects seem all to occur under some very specific conditions: techno, ritual tribal dance, military marches. Very different from the usual singing and dancing.
The question is: What are the conditions that cause strong feelings of group bonding? So far i have come up with:
The activity has a strong symbolic connection to the group identity
The activity is connected with the pursue of a common goal (example: shouting slogans on political demonstations)
a short, simple rythm (“Ho, ho, ho chi minh!”)
Drums
connection of movement with shouting or clapping or some other kind of noise.
Each participant makes the sound (instead of just some drummers in the mass)
the more participants, the stronger the effect (there is probably a critical mass)
In addition, the singing and dancing needs to be part of a system that integrates different methods of building group bonding.
Moreover, all of this is nearly worthless, unless the group has some real substance, such as common goals, a group identity, solidarity.
Which leads to the question: What kind of solidarity, unity, group identity do we want to create? Why?