Singing with strangers: the social significance of music

Abstract

***** PLEASE NOTE: This material has been published in Journal of Consciousness Studies 33 (3-4), 2026 (pp. 78-100), the only definitive repository of the content that has been certified and accepted after peer review. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by Imprint Academic. This material may not be copied or reposted without explicit permission. Copyright © 2026 by Imprint Academic. ***** ABSTRACT: When people sing together, they are likely to experience a sense of enhanced closeness. This study explores the extent to which that feeling of closeness is affected by how in tune singers are with each other. Pairs of same-sex strangers (N=162) with a broad spread of backgrounds and singing abilities either sang a familiar song together (Happy Birthday) on first encounter or played a cooperative card memory game. Both activities resulted in an enhanced sense of connection between participants even though the singing bout (at ca 30 s) was significantly shorter than the card game. The quality of joint singing (in terms of fit between participants' tuning) did not significantly influence its bonding effects, suggesting that the social effects of singing can be independent of its quality. Singing together may be of more significance as a social act than as an appealing sound. ***** The appendices and dataset for this article are available on this repository at https://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/2683/ and https://doi.org/10.24379/RCM.00002683 ****