Traveling Groups Stick Together: How Collective Directional Movement Influences Social Cohesion

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that the social act of moving through space with others-collective directional movement-is associated with greater levels of group cohesion compared to static activities. We asked participants to imagine participating in activities as part of a same-sex group and found that imagining going on a journey is associated with higher levels of expected cohesion compared to imagining attending a meeting (Study 1) or an event (Study 2). Study 3 replicates the main effect using different manipulations and finds that it persists regardless of whether the imagined group were friends or strangers. Two further studies employed real-world tasks and show that the effect is not a consequence of goal ascription (Study 4) or synchrony/exertion (Study 5). We argue that the link between this activity and cohesion is a consequence of its ubiquity in social ecologies and the interdependence and shared common fate of those engaged in it.

Collective directional movement and the perception of social cohesion

“…Our cohesion instrument, although clearly reliable (see also Wilson et al, 2018), has not been evaluated in any other way, and so this must also be considered a potential limitation of the current work. One aim of future research should be to further validate this instrument, and also to explore how it relates to other relevant variables.…”

“…The order of presentation was counterbalanced across the sample. The scenarios are reproduced below and were based on similar items successfully used by Wilson et al (2018). Directional: We would like you to imagine a group of eight people travelling on an important journey.…”

“…Participants (N = 62) took part (52 females; M age = 23) voluntarily at the beginning of an induction class. Sample size was based on the observation that previous research (Lakens & Stel, 2011;Wilson et al, 2018) investigating similar phenomena has reported medium effect sizes. A 2 9 2 mixed design was employed.…”

“…Members of cohesive groups will trust one another, experience a bond of friendship, and be motivated to act in each other's interests. Wilson et al (2018) suggested that the psychological mechanisms governing social bonding are sensitive to certain kinds of group activity. They characterized collective directional movement as a collaborative social behaviour that entails interdependence between participants, and from this they derived predictions about how it might influence first-person ratings of cohesion.…”

“…We justify this in the following way. As Wilson et al (2018) point out, the utility of collective directional movement as a behaviour has made it a ubiquitous part of social life. Indeed, one could argue that it represents an invariant feature of human social environments, in the sense that it is found in every society that we know about.…”