Synchronised group singing enhances social bonding more than group conversation or recitation does: A Registered Report across 30 languages
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study designs: Randomized Controlled Trial, Clinical Trial
Abstract: The evolution of music, language, and prosociality has been debated since before Darwin. The social bonding hypothesis proposes that these phenomena may be interlinked: musicality may have facilitated the evolution of social bonding beyond the possibilities of spoken language. Although dozens of experimental studies have argued that synchronised rhythms can promote bonding, methodological issues including publication bias, sample bias, experimenter effects, and appropriateness of experimental controls make it unclear whether synchronous singing reliably and generally enhances bonding relative to speaking. Following a peer-reviewed Stage 1 Registered Report protocol, we collected data from randomized controlled in-person experiments with 1,017 participants singing and speaking in groups of 5-10 in 30 diverse languages (N = 901 participants after planned quality control exclusions). Our results strongly supported all three of our pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses (all Bayes Factors > 30): (i) synchronised group singing enhances self-reported social bonding (20.9% mean increase), a significantly greater increase than (ii) group conversation (12.9% increase) or (iii) synchronous recitation (15.2% increase). Unregistered exploratory analyses suggested that perceived synchronisation and enjoyment are key predictors of social bonding, results are not artefacts of expectancy or group size, and singing’s bonding effects may be stronger in non-Western than Western contexts. Group singing may serve as a better bonding activity than speaking activities in settings such as school or workplace orientation events. Our study provides strong cross-cultural empirical evidence that music is not merely “auditory cheesecake” that is “useless” compared with language (Pinker, 1997). All forms of vocal communication increase social bonding, but group singing bonds us together over 1.5 times more on average than spoken conversation does.
Authors: Zixuan Jia, Yuto Ozaki, Danya Vivianne Pavlovich, jiawen huang, Emmanouil Benetos, Uswatun Khasanah, Sasha Calhoun, Gakuto Chiba, Yoichi Kitayama, Shinya Fujii, Dhwani P. Sadaphal, Tecumseh Fitch, Sebastian Vaida, Simion Echim, Tudor Popescu, Zhuozhuang Shi, Massimo Grassi, Lucrezia Guiotto Nai Fovino, Jan Hajič, Petr Nuska, Barbora Štěpánková, Prapatsorn Tiratanti, Joseph Bulbulia, Ye He, Yukun Li, Fang Liu, Giacomo Novembre, Chloé Coissac, Flavia Arnese, Yannick Jadoul, Andrea Ravignani, Florence Ewomazino Nweke, Oladimeji Adedayo Olajide, Oluwatoyin Olokodana-James, Neda Mousavi, Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, Ulvhild Færøvik, Astrid Lenvik, Marianna Ruiz Loria, Jerónimo Quintero Martínez, Juan F. Ariza, Juan David Leongómez, Anne Cabildo, Christina M Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden, Polina Proutskova, Daniel Macholl, Jia Hoong Ong, Chloe Wider, Bahar Tuncgenc, Francesca Talamini, Lilly Leuschner, William Forde Thompson, Gemma Perry, Lee Wolff, Robert M Ross, Adwoa Ampiah-Bonney, Shira Gabriel, Peter Pfordresher, Hineatua Parkinson, Ferenc Honbolygó, Csaba Kertész, Yuri G. Pavlov, Alexandra I. Kosachenko, Tarasov Dmitry Alexandrovich, Wojciech Krzyżanowski, Piotr Podlipniak, Shahaboddin Dabaghi Varnosfaderani, Ann-Kathrin Beck, Inkuk Kim, John M. McBride, Taeyun Jung, Teona Lomsadze, Sara Ripley, Katerine Bilous, Laurel Trainor, Joshua Silberstein Bamford, Marc Thompson, Martin Hartmann, Bronwyn Tarr, Kaiyi (Kaye) Han, Aston K. McCullough, Psyche Loui, Ruwin Dias, Aitana Garcia Arasco, Anouk Bellot, Katarzyna Pisanski, Limor Raviv, Remi van Casteren, Kristoffer Bæk Kortegaard, Niels Chr. Hansen, Dilyana Kurdova, Zoya Mikova, Adwoa Arhine, Michael Ohene Okantah, Kofi Kudonu Labayili, Yiqing Ma, David R. W. Sears, Luis Armando Rivera, Sotirios Kolios, Roberto Zariquiey, Mariana Poblete, Seleni Rojas, Felix Haiduk, Nozuko Nguqu, Patricia Opondo, Mark Lenini Parselelo, Brenda Suyanne Barbosa, Marco Antonio Correa Varella, Michel Belyk, Mason Youngblood, Suzanne Purdy, Patrick E. Savage
Institutions: Macquarie University, University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7212425766