ArticleRoyal Society open science2015
The ice-breaker effect: singing mediates fast social bonding.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 103 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
103 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Music making and wellbeing: A systematic review of methods, musical activities, and outcomes.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2026Pooled it
- A systematic review on the effects of group singing on persistent pain in people with long-term health conditions.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2020Pooled it
- Exploring the Physiological and Psychological Effects of Group Chanting in Australia: Reduced Stress, Cortisol and Enhanced Social Connection.Journal of religion and health · 2024Trial
- Trial
- Trial
- How group singing facilitates recovery from the symptoms of postnatal depression: a comparative qualitative study.BMC psychology · 2018Trial
- Assessing the impact of a postnatal singing intervention on mental health, well-being measures and mother-infant interaction: results from the SHAPER-PND trial.BMJ mental health · 2026Article
- Music Therapy for Well-being in the Growing Years.Indian pediatrics · 2026Review
- Community health intervention through musical engagement (CHIME) in South Africa: A formative exploration of the feasibility and development of a music-based intervention to support perinatal mental health.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Cultural appropriateness, co-creation, and subjective vitality: a pre-post structural modeling study of immersive performances in rural Guangdong, China.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Vocal education participation and psychological wellbeing among international students in China: mediating roles of emotion regulation and acculturative stress.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Neural and cardiorespiratory responses in vocalization and slow breathing: Contrasting brain and autonomic responses.PloS one · 2026Article
- As group size increases, individuals modify their vocal features to signal cooperation while remaining recognizable.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Quality over quantity: joint group dance strengthens schoolchildren's social connections and wellbeing.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Article
- The effect of group singing interventions on health biomarkers in people with stigmatising conditions: a scoping review protocol.Systematic reviews · 2025Article
- Pleasurable music activates cerebral µ-opioid receptors: a combined PET-fMRI study.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2025Article
- Comparing the biopsychosocial impact of group singing and yoga activities in older adults living with Parkinson's disease.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of music and singing as research methods to improve migrants' involvement in health research and policy-making.Health research policy and systems · 2025Article
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
43 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has been proposed that singing evolved to facilitate social cohesion. However, it remains unclear whether bonding arises out of properties intrinsic to singing or whether any social engagement can have a similar effect. Furthermore, previous research has used one-off singing sessions without exploring the emergence of social bonding over time. In this semi-naturalistic study, we followed newly formed singing and non-singing (crafts or creative writing) adult education classes over seven months. Participants rated their closeness to their group and their affect, and were given a proxy measure of endorphin release, before and after their class, at three timepoints (months 1, 3 and 7). We show that although singers and non-singers felt equally connected by timepoint 3, singers experienced much faster bonding: singers demonstrated a significantly greater increase in closeness at timepoint 1, but the more gradual increase shown by non-singers caught up over time. This represents the first evidence for an 'ice-breaker effect' of singing in promoting fast cohesion between unfamiliar individuals, which bypasses the need for personal knowledge of group members gained through prolonged interaction. We argue that singing may have evolved to quickly bond large human groups of relative strangers, potentially through encouraging willingness to coordinate by enhancing positive affect.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.