Social identity research on crowds demonstrates how cognitive self‐definition as a crowd member results in conformity to identity‐relevant norms. Rather less research has addressed the social‐relational changes within a crowd and how these impact collective experience positively. The present study investigates these processes at a month‐long mass gathering in India. Analysis of 37 interviews with participants attending the annual Magh Mela pilgrimage evidences the concept of shared identity as underpinning their understanding of this mass gathering. Moreover, a theoretically derived thematic analysis of these interviews shows the value of the analytic concepts of recognition, validation, and solidarity in illuminating the ways in which social relations in the crowd were experienced and contributed to the experience of the event. Through exploring the multi‐dimensional nature of relational connectedness in crowds we contribute to an understanding of crowd experience and group processes.

Shruti Tewari

Humanities and Social Sciences

Hopkins N

Reicher S

Stevenson C

Pandey K

Shankar S

Social Psychology

Fulltext

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IIM Indore

European Journal of Social Psychology

In everyday life we perceive events as having durations. Recent research suggests that the labeling of a stimulus influences the experience of its duration. Plausibly, the social meaning attributed to a stimulus impacts upon the amount of attention allocated to it, with greater attention resulting in better encoding and longer reproduction times. However, direct evidence for the role of attention in this effect of social meaning on duration reproduction is lacking. The present study addresses this issue directly. Eighty-four male Hindu pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela in India listened to an ambiguous sound clip and reproduced its duration in a prospective timing task. The context-relevant social meaning of this sound clip was manipulated through attributing the sound to either the religious festival or busy city streets. Attentional load was manipulated by asking half the participants to perform a concurrent task. Reproduced durations were longer in the Mela compared to the City condition but only when participants completed a single task. The finding that mere labeling of the stimulus impacts duration judgments in a prospective paradigm in the single-task but not the dual-task conditions suggests that the effect of social meaning is indeed mediated through the deployment of attentional resources.

Timing & Time Perception

Attention Mediates the Effect of Context-Relevant Social

A key issue for political psychology concerns the processes whereby people come to invest psychologically in socially and politically significant group identities. Since Durkheim, it has been assumed that participation in group-relevant collective events increases one's investment in such group identities. However, little empirical research explicitly addresses this or the processes involved. We investigated these issues in a longitudinal questionnaire study conducted at one of the world's largest collective events—a month-long Hindu festival in north India (the Magh Mela). Data gathered from pilgrims and comparable others who did not attend the event show that one month after the event, those who had participated (but not the controls) exhibited heightened social identification as a Hindu and increased frequency of prayer rituals. Data gathered from pilgrims during the festival predicted these outcomes. Specifically, perceptions of sharing a common identity with other pilgrims and of being able to enact one's social identity in this event helped predict changes in participants' identification and behavior. The wider significance of these data for political psychology is discussed.

Political Psychology

How Collective Participation Impacts Social Identity: A Longitudinal Study from India

Identifying with a group can impact (positively) upon group members' health. This can be explained (in part) through the social relations that a shared identity allows. We investigated the relationship between a shared identity and health in a longitudinal study of a month-long pilgrimage in north India. Questionnaire data (N = 416) showed that self-reported health (measured before, during, and after the event) was better at the event than before, and although it reduced on returning home, it remained higher than before the event. This trajectory was predicted by data concerning pilgrims' perceptions of a shared identity with other pilgrims at the event. We also found evidence that a shared identity amongst pilgrims had an indirect effect on changes in self-assessed health via the belief one had closer relations with one's fellow pilgrims. We discuss the implications of these data for our understandings of the role of shared identity in social relations and health.

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Shared identity predicts enhanced health at a mass gathering

Environmental Psychology has typically considered noise as pollution and focused upon its negative impact. However, recent research in psychology and anthropology indicates the experience of noise as aversive depends upon the meanings with which it is attributed. Moreover, such meanings seem to be dependent on the social context. Here we extend this research through studying the aural experience of a religious festival in North India which is characterised by loud, continuous and cacophonous noise. Reporting an experiment and semi-structured interviews, we show that loud noise is experienced as pleasant or unpleasant according to the meanings attributed to it. Specifically, the experiment shows the same noise is experienced more positively (and listened to longer) when attributed to the festival rather than to a non-festival source. In turn, the qualitative data show that within the Mela, noises judged as having a religious quality are reported as more positive than noises that are not. Moreover, the qualitative data suggest a key factor in the evaluation of noise is our participants' social identities as pilgrims. This identity provides a framework for interpreting the auditory environment and noises judged as intruding into their religious experience were judged negatively, whereas noises judged as contributing to their religious experience were judged more positively. Our findings therefore point to the ways in which our social identities are implicated in the process of attributing meaning to the auditory environment. extcopyright 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Journal	Data powered by TypesetEuropean Journal of Social Psychology
Publisher	Data powered by TypesetWiley
ISSN	0046-2772
Open Access	Yes