Why Does Singing Together Feel So Good?
Music, connection, collective effervescence and the biology of singing together
Last night I was at a concert in Glasgow with almost 3,000 other people. There was the music, the dancing, the excitement and, of course, a brilliant performer.
But there was another moment that really struck me.
Thousands of us were singing the same words at the same time. For a few minutes, all those individual voices seemed to become one enormous voice.
And it felt fantastic. It reminded me of something I had read in psychologist Dacher Keltner’s book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life: collective effervescence.
The term originally comes from sociologist Émile Durkheim and describes that heightened sense of energy, connection and belonging we can experience when we become absorbed in something together. Music. Dancing. Worship. Sport. Celebration. Protest. Ritual. Or, apparently, several thousand people belting out an Anastacia’s “left outside alone” in Glasgow.
Psychologists are now beginning to investigate collective effervescence scientifically. One recent study looked at live music experiences across four studies involving 789 participants. People who experienced greater collective effervescence during live music also reported greater enjoyment and a stronger sense of meaning during the event. I suspect those experiencing greater collective effervescence didn’t have their phones in front of their faces (but that’s another blog!). Interestingly, the experience was also associated with greater happiness a week later.
Am I saying that attending one concert is going to optimise your health? No, however, there may be something distinctive about being emotionally and physically immersed in an experience with other people that is beneficial to us as social beings. When we're not simply hearing the same music; we're anticipating together, responding together, cheering together and, often, singing and moving together.
Collectiveness matters and singing together seems particularly powerful
Very recent research has looked directly at collective singing. A 2026 study involving two experiments and a longitudinal study found that singing in groups was associated with positive outcomes including improved mood and life satisfaction, even when participants weren't already members of an established group.
Importantly, the researchers found that collective effervescence appeared to help explain some of these effects: the sense that I am connected to the people around me and something special is happening here. That distinction interests me. Perhaps the experience isn't simply singing and then afterwards feeling “ better,” rather, it’s “I sang with other people, and for a while I felt part of something bigger than myself.”
What about Regular Collective Singing?
Choirs seem able to create connection surprisingly quickly. Research into choirs has been pointing in this direction for some time. One fascinating study compared singers rehearsing in ordinary community choirs of around 20–80 people with a large “mega-choir” of 232 singers.
After 90 minutes of singing, feelings of inclusion, connection and positive affect increased. The researchers also measured pain thresholds as an indirect proxy for endorphin activity. Perhaps most interestingly, the large choir showed a particularly substantial increase in feelings of social closeness, despite large numbers of people not necessarily knowing each other.
When you're in a choir you're doing much more than producing notes.
You're listening
Matching timing
Breathing
Remembering lyrics
Watching your choir leader
Adjusting your voice to the people beside you
Sometimes moving together
Usually laughing at some point
And gradually creating something none of you could create alone
As a member of Rock Choir, I know how great it feels to sing collectively, and I see the impact on others, hear the chatter, the laughter, the shared jokes.
There may be a physiological dimension too
This is where singing becomes particularly interesting to me as an Nutritional Therapist. Producing voice requires close coordination between the respiratory system, the larynx and the autonomic nervous system. A 2025 scoping review of 15 studies found evidence that vocal activity can influence autonomic function, including heart rate and heart-rate variability, and identified physiological synchronisation during group vocalisation as one emerging theme.
One obvious reason may be our breathing. When we sing, we don't breathe exactly as we do during ordinary conversation. Singing often involves an inhalation followed by a longer, controlled exhalation, and breathing rate and pattern can have a powerful influence on heart-rate variability.
A systematic review and meta-analysis found that voluntary slow breathing increased measures of vagally mediated heart-rate variability, both during breathing and following practice. These HRV measures are commonly used as indicators of cardiac parasympathetic nervous system activity. That’s the part of our nervous system that were in when we feel safe and calm and physiological activities like rest, digest and repair take place.
So there is a plausible pathway through which singing may influence autonomic regulation; however, singing involves system wide coordination including:
Breathing rhythm
Vocalisation
Emotion
Attention
Movement
Listening
Social connection
And, in group singing, synchronisation with other people
A 2026 systematic review looking at music therapy and vagally mediated HRV found an overall tendency towards increased cardiac parasympathetic activity. However, the studies varied considerably in participants, interventions and measurement methods, and many had small samples or a high risk of bias. The authors therefore described the findings as promising rather than conclusive.
Music and vocalisation may influence autonomic regulation, but we're still understanding exactly how, for whom and under what circumstances.
Singing may influence some of our other signalling systems too
There are some intriguing findings beyond the autonomic nervous system.
A small University of Nottingham study involved nine healthy postmenopausal women from a local choir who completed separate sessions of singing, dancing, cycling and reading.
After 30 minutes of singing, plasma concentrations of the endocannabinoid anandamide increased by 42%, alongside increases in two related compounds, and participants reported improved positive mood and emotions. Nine participants is clearly far too small a study from which to claim that singing reliably “boosts happy hormones” but it’s an intriguing finding.
What about Choirs?
I've experienced some of this personally through Rock Choir. There are other choirs, so just my experience! What I particularly like about the model when applying to practice, is its accessibility. Rock Choir was created contemporary group singing without auditions or a requirement to read music. It now reports more than 30,000 members taking part in over 400 weekly rehearsals across the UK and Ireland.
That matters because many adults can carry negative beliefs about themselves:
“I can't sing.”
“I'm not musical.”
“I'd be embarrassed.”
Removing auditions, solo performance and music-reading requirements lowers some of those barriers. You turn up, you learn together, you get things wrong together, you laugh and you hear the harmonies gradually appear. Eventually you become part of a sound that could not exist without everyone else in the room.
Perhaps that's one reason it feels so good.
Synchrony may be part of the magic
Humans seem to respond strongly to doing things in synchrony. Other research has shown that moving rhythmically together can increase feelings of social closeness, which suggests singing may have something in common with dancing, marching, clapping, chanting and even crowds moving together at sporting events. There is something rather extraordinary about that.
Our brains and bodies are individually complex, yet humans repeatedly create rituals in which we deliberately synchronise ourselves with one another. I suspect we have intuitively understood this for thousands of years; something science is only now beginning to untangle.
Laughter probably belongs in this conversation too
I think about what often happens during a choir session. We laugh. And laughter, like singing, is rhythmic, vocal and respiratory. It would be too simplistic to describe laughter as merely “switching on the parasympathetic nervous system”. Laughter itself can briefly raise heart rate and arousal before the body moves into recovery. A useful reminder that wellbeing isn't always about being permanently calm.
Healthy nervous-system function is not simply parasympathetic good, sympathetic bad. We need to be able to become excited, activated and energised...and then recover. A concert is a perfect illustration. Your nervous system is unlikely to be in a deeply restful state. There was excitement, crowds, movement, noise and stimulation. But there was also joy, connection, absorption and, afterwards, that wonderful feeling of having experienced something together.
Regulation isn't the absence of activation. It's the ability to move flexibly between states.
Nutrition matters enormously to me. What we eat, when and how we eat, and how we digest and absorb our nutrients are all important. So to is movement, sleep, metabolic health and stress. We can't reduce human health to food, exercise targets, blood results and biomarkers. We also need:
connection
belonging
purpose
play
pleasure
movement
laughter
awe
experiences that take us temporarily outside ourselves like being in nature or at a big event.
That is one of the reasons I'm so invested in the question:
What helps people thrive?
Nutrition is foundational. General movement or strength training, better sleep, stress management or maybe learning to manage our blood glucose can also help. Sometimes though, it might be standing beside thousands of strangers singing the same song at the top of your voice.
Perhaps Keltner's idea of collective effervescence gives us a name for something humans have instinctively sought for generations at:
concerts
football matches
places of worship
firesides
ceilidhs
festivals
Sometimes wellbeing isn't something we need to optimise, or hack; sometimes we just need to join in, because thriving doesn’t need to be complicated.
References
Gabriel, S., Koefler, N., Poulin, M. J., Schneider, V., Dvir, M., Gutierrez, C., & Naidu, E. (2026). More than a song: Collective singing increases well-being and self-expansion via collective effervescence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672261479483
Koefler, N., Naidu, E., Gabriel, S., Schneider, V., Pascuzzi, G. S., & Paravati, E. (2026). Let the music play: Live music fosters collective effervescence and leads to lasting positive outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 52(3), 546–558. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241288027
Laborde, S., Allen, M. S., Borges, U., et al. (2022). Effects of voluntary slow breathing on heart rate and heart rate variability: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 138, 104711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104711
Morales-Luque, C., Carrillo-Franco, L., López-González, M. V., González-García, M., & Dawid-Milner, M. S. (2025). Mapping the neurophysiological link between voice and autonomic function: A scoping review. Biology, 14(10), 1382. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology14101382
Stone, N. L., Millar, S. A., Herrod, P. J. J., et al. (2018). An analysis of endocannabinoid concentrations and mood following singing and exercise in healthy volunteers. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 269. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00269
Weinstein, D., Launay, J., Pearce, E., Dunbar, R. I. M., & Stewart, L. (2016). Group music performance causes elevated pain thresholds and social bonding in small and large groups of singers. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(2), 152–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.10.002
Flater, B., Brean, A., & Quintana, D. S. (2026). Music therapy and vagally mediated heart rate variability: A systematic review and narrative synthesis. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 219, 113288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2025.113288
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