Cho Philip S, Escoffier Nicolas, Mao Yinan, Ching April, Green Christopher, Jong Jonathan, Whitehouse Harvey
Yonsei University, Underwood International College, Songdo, South Korea.
Yonsei University, Institute of Convergence Science, Center for Science and Engineering Applications in Social Science, Seoul, South Korea.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 26;9:2071. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02071. eCollection 2018.
We present the first neurophysiological signatures showing distinctive effects of group social context and emotional arousal on cultural perceptions, such as the efficacy of religious rituals. Using a novel protocol, EEG data were simultaneously recorded from ethnic Chinese religious believers in group and individual settings as they rated the perceived efficacy of low, medium, and high arousal spirit-medium rituals presented as video clips. Neural oscillatory patterns were then analyzed for these perceptual judgements, categorized as low, medium, and high efficacy. The results revealed distinct neural signatures and behavioral patterns between the experimental conditions. Arousal levels predicted ratings of ritual efficacy. Increased efficacy was marked by suppressed alpha and beta power, regardless of group or individual setting. In groups, efficacy ratings converged. Individual setting showed increased within-participant phase synchronization in alpha and beta bands, while group setting enhanced between-participant theta phase synchronization. This reflected group participants' orientation toward a common perspective and social coordination. These findings suggest that co-presence in groups leads to a social-tuning effect supported by between-participant theta phase synchrony. Together these neural synchrony patterns reveal how collective rituals have both individual and communal dimensions. The emotionality of spirit-medium rituals drives individual perceptions of efficacy, while co-presence in groups signals the significance of an event and socially tunes enhanced agreement in perceptual ratings. In other words, mass gatherings may foster social cohesion without necessarily requiring group-size scaling limitations of direct face-to-face interaction. This could have implications for the scaling computability of synchrony in large groups as well as for humanistic studies in areas such as symbolic interactionism.
我们展示了首个神经生理学特征，表明群体社会环境和情绪唤起对文化认知具有独特影响，比如宗教仪式的功效。采用一种新颖的方案，当华裔宗教信徒在群体和个体环境中对以视频片段呈现的低、中、高唤起水平的灵媒仪式的感知功效进行评分时，同步记录他们的脑电图数据。然后针对这些感知判断分析神经振荡模式，将其分类为低、中、高效能。结果揭示了实验条件之间不同的神经特征和行为模式。唤起水平可预测仪式功效评分。无论在群体还是个体环境中，效能增加都表现为阿尔法和贝塔波功率受到抑制。在群体中，功效评分趋于一致。个体环境中，参与者内部阿尔法和贝塔波段的相位同步增加，而群体环境增强了参与者之间的theta相位同步。这反映了群体参与者趋向共同视角和社会协调的倾向。这些发现表明，群体中的共同在场会导致一种由参与者之间的theta相位同步支持的社会调谐效应。这些神经同步模式共同揭示了集体仪式如何兼具个体和集体维度。灵媒仪式的情感性驱动个体对功效的感知，而群体中的共同在场则表明一个事件的重要性，并在社会层面上调谐增强感知评分中的一致性。换句话说，大规模集会可能促进社会凝聚力，而不一定需要直接面对面互动的群体规模限制。这可能对大群体中同步性的规模可计算性以及符号互动主义等领域的人文研究产生影响。
