No self-respecting university student will complete their degree without at some point sitting around a campfire and singing “Cheap Wine” with a group of friends while consuming the same. It doesn’t matter that you aren’t hitting the right notes or even getting the words right; what matters is that you are singing along because, as new research shows, singing together bonds a group like nothing else.
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The researchers in this new study wanted to see whether there was something special about singing as a bonding behaviour or whether any group activity would have the same effect. To test this the researchers sourced subjects who were volunteer workers from the charity sector and put them through courses that ran over seven months. There were seven groups and four of the courses were in singing, one in creative writing, and two in crafts. The people in the classes were given surveys before and after individual sessions in the first month of the course, in the third month, and at the end of the seven months of the course. The surveys included asking the subjects to rate how close they felt to their classmates.
They had expected to find that singers felt closer to each other than the other groups but this was not what they found. What they did find was that all groups felt close to each other by the end of the seven months to the same degree however, the singing groups became bonded much more rapidly.
It appears that singing is a powerful way to bond a group simultaneously probably because singing together is a uniquely communal experience that can break down barriers between disparate people.
Religious groups were onto this centuries ago of course, and at least this provides some social redemption for the practice of karaoke.
