Have you ever felt collective effervescence?

This week’s Better You, Backed by Science is about Collective Effervescence.

Have you ever been at a concert when thousands of people suddenly started singing the same song?

Or at a football match or other sporting event when the whole crowd began chanting together?

Maybe you’ve sung in a choir, or stood around a birthday cake while everyone sang Happy Birthday.

If so, you may have experienced something psychologists call collective effervescence.

Collective Effervescence

I absolutely love that term. Because effervescence sounds bubbly, energetic, fizzy.

It was sociologist Émile Durkheim who originally coined the term more than a century ago. It was to describe that powerful sense of energy and togetherness that can arise when people participate in something collectively.

And psychologists are now studying it.

In fact, a fascinating new study was published in September 2026 that looked specifically at what happens when people sing together.

Across two experiments and a longer-term study, researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo found that group singing was linked with outcomes that included positive mood, life satisfaction and what psychologists call self-expansion – that’s a sense that our experience of ourselves has somehow broadened.

And an important part of what seemed to explain these effects was collective effervescence.

The researchers describe it as a combination of two feelings:

I’m connected to these people and Something special is happening.

I love that description, because I think most of us know exactly what it feels like.

Think of a time – concert, family gathering, even in a pub – where everyone joins in and sings a chorus together.

For a moment, you’re not just listening to music alongside strangers. You’re all having the same experience – together.

And interestingly, you don’t necessarily need to know the other people. The new research specifically investigated whether singing together could produce these benefits even without an already established group.

In other words, sometimes we don’t need to feel connected before we do something together.

Doing something together can help create the connection. I love that because we humans are social creatures. We’re wired to connect. We need to connect.

And singing isn’t the only example.

Other research on live music events has found that collective effervescence is associated with greater enjoyment and meaning during the event, and it had lasting effects.

I suspect you’ve felt it, not only at a concert or sporting event, but at a wedding, a church service, a religious or spiritual gathering, a community celebration, maybe even when you laughed with others at something funny.

It’s got me pondering this morning:

How many of us think of emotions as things that happen inside us as individuals?

Like I feel happy. I feel excited. I feel moved.

But maybe some of life’s most powerful emotions don’t happen entirely inside us.

They happen between us.

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So here’s something to notice this week.

The next time you find yourself doing something collectively – whether it’s singing, cheering, laughing, dancing or celebrating – pay attention to the feeling of togetherness.

Don’t just notice what you’re doing.

Notice what it feels like to be doing it with other people.

Because sometimes the experience becomes bigger than anything one person could have created alone.

Sometimes joy isn’t simply something we feel.

It’s something we create together.

References

The 2026 paper. Link.

A 2026 paper on how live music fosters collective effervescence with lasting effects. Link.

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