ArticlePloS one2021
Lost in the crowd: Imagining walking in synchrony with a crowd increases affiliation and deindividuation.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- We Are All in This Together: Effects of Synchrony in Social Media Videos on Viewers' Experience of Self-Transcendent Emotions.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Re-imagining space: Conceptualizing new psychological interventions against segregationist attitudes and behaviours.The British journal of social psychology · 2026Article
- The Moving Mandala: Exploring the Pro-Social Effects of Musical and Non-Musical Synchrony in Children in a Virtual World.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- GrooVR: an open access virtual reality drumming application to improve pro-sociality using synchronous movement.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- You, me, and us: Maintaining self-other distinction enhances coordination, agency, and affect.iScience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Moving in time with others-interpersonal coordination-increases affiliation, helping behaviours and gives rise to a host of other prosocial outcomes. Recent research suggests that merely imagining coordination may lead to similar social effects. In the present study, participants were asked to imagine walking with a crowd in a coordinated (versus uncoordinated) way to explore the effects of imagined coordination on individuals' perceptions of themselves and the crowd. Imagined coordination led to greater levels of deindividuation and affiliation. That is, participants were less likely to report seeing themselves as unique individuals, instead viewing themselves as a part of a group (deindividuation) and more likely to report a sense of emotional closeness (affiliation) with the imagined group. Deindividuation partially mediated the effect of imagined coordination on affiliation. This work establishes that imagined synchrony can be employed online to foster prosocial attitudes towards groups of people, and that a process of deindividuation might mediate this effect.
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Registered trials
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