Why Do Crowds Feel So Good?

In a sports stadium, for example, most people feel slightly buzzed, even without consuming a drop of beer. Where does this buzz come from?



Credit: Flickr, Ian Broyles.

The thrill of the crowd derives from our basic social nature, which is deeply rooted in human evolution. Millions of years ago, hominins weren't always the strongest, fastest, toughest, or even smartest animal, but we had one crucial quality working in our favor: social communication. We were able to cooperate, communicate, and plan ahead. If we humans hadn't cooperated and enjoyed each other's company over the course of evolution, we never would have survived. Contemporary crowds put us in touch with this deeply social dimension of our being. To this day, it feels good when dopamine, serotonin, and/or oxytocin are released in our bodies at a sports event, as scientists have shown happens in general when we're engaged in group rituals and other social bonding.

At its best, the whole crowd experience is transcendent, connecting us with something larger and greater than ourselves. We will never sit in the same room with the millions of people who live in our country, but we get a feel for what that would be like when we go to a game together with 30-50,000 of them and experience what sociologist Emile Durkheim long ago called "collective effervescence," the bubbly, giddy feeling of group belonging.

This effervescent feeling is similar to looking at huge mountains, the ocean, or stars in the night sky. It's a kind of awe, a marveling at forces greater than the individual self. It lifts us up and makes our individual worries fade away for the moment. It's like awe at a rock concert or even the "mini-awe" we get when we throw coins in water fountains (as I argue here). These are all rituals that connect us to something larger than the individual self.
Wrigley Field, Credit: Ttarasiuk, Flckr.

Obviously crowds can also be scary and dangerous, as in well-known cases of violent political rallies. However, by and large most sports crowds are remarkably well-behaved. Somehow 30-50,000 strangers routinely manage to enter the same space, sit inches from each other, eat and drink and shout, and then exit peacefully without so much as a broken fingernail.


Crowds, in short, put us in touch with humanity. And that usually feels good.



Doing the original wave. Credit: Flickr, Roberta WB.






















My Related, Short Article about Awe, Human Connections--and
Why We Throw Coins in Water Fountains:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_we_throw_coins_in_fountains