Only about 1 in 4 Americans said that they had trust in the nation’s institutions in 2023 – with big business (1 in 7), television news (1 in 7) and Congress (1 in 12) scraping the very bottom.
While institutional trust is decreasing, political polarization is increasing. The majority of Republicans (72%) and Democrats (64%) think of each other as more immoral than other Americans – a nearly 30% rise from 2016 to 2022. When compared with similar democracies, the United States has exhibited the largest increase in animus toward the opposing political party over the past 40 years.
When public trust and political consensus disappear, what remains? This question has occupied my research for the past 20 years, both as a scholar trained in social anthropology, organizational science and social cognition and as a professor of psychology.
Researchers don’t have all the answers, but it seems that even in the absence of public trust and agreement, people can share experiences. Whether watching a spelling bee or a football game, “we” still exist if “we” can witness it together.
My colleagues and I call this human capacity to take a collective perspective theory of collective mind. The foundation of collective mind, and what we study in the lab, is shared attention, instances when people experience the world with others.
Shared attention amplifies experiences
Experiments in the laboratory with adults show that shared experiences amplify psychological and behavioral reactions to the world.
My colleagues and I find that compared with attending to the world alone, or at different times than others, synchronous attention with others yields stronger memories, deeper emotions and firmer motivations. Studies show that seeing words together renders them more memorable, watching sad movies together makes them sadder, and focusing together on shared goals increases efforts toward their pursuit. Sharing attention to the behavior of others yields more imitation of that behavior.
Critically, those experiencing something with you need not be physically present. Although in some experiments participants sit side by side, in other studies participants believe they are attending together from different lab rooms or even across the nation. Irrespective of the location, the sense that “we are attending” to something together at the same time – as compared with in solitude or on your own schedule – amplifies the experience.
Laboratories in the United States, Australia, Hungary, Germany and Denmark have found similar results. Notably, some studies have found that people want to have more shared experiences, even when they don’t actually enjoy them more than solitary experiences.
What’s behind these observations? As a social species that survives through joint action, human beings in general need a common baseline from which to act. When shared experiences amplify what we know together, it can guide subsequent behavior, rendering…
