the men’s basketball team will take on Georgetown tonight<\/a>, Jan. 25, at 8:30 p.m. in Gampel Pavilion.)<\/p>\nThe study shows the more heart synchrony there is during an event, the more transformative and emotional the experience, Xygalatas says. This leads to greater \u201cidentity fusion,\u201d a particularly strong form of social cohesion, for those who experience something en masse.<\/p>\n
For each basketball game, students at Xygalatas\u2019 lab noted everything that happened \u2013 from baskets and blocks to shots and steals – to account for structural differences between games to see if these affected heart rate synchrony and identity fusion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile these properties of the game obviously play a role,\u201d Xygalatas says, \u201cit was actually the social setting that made the greatest difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
While work on the study started years before the pandemic, its findings are particularly relevant as governments, organizations, and other groups struggle to decide when to close or reopen to the public in reaction to coronavirus data.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a policymaker, there are always costs and benefits. But what our study shows is what those benefits might be, the social benefits of participating in person. Whether those outweigh any health concerns, that\u2019s not for me to say, but the study speaks to the social benefits,\u201d says Xygalatas.<\/p>\n
He adds, \u201cThe implications are very wide-reaching because this is not just about sporting events, but also concerts, theatrical plays, public demonstrations, and even things like academic conferences and teaching. We all know on some level that it\u2019s not the same to teach remotely. We hope these results will help us figure out why.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, researchers wouldn\u2019t expect to see the same synchrony during the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Olympics are a little bit different because the games are mostly about individualized sports,” Xygalatas says. “You don\u2019t tend to get the same strong sense of loyalty as you do with other group athletics. You can have fans of particular athletes, and of course those athletes represent countries, but they do not tend to create the same level of cohesion among fans. Some of our future studies might hopefully help us understand why this happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
A group watching \u201cHamilton\u201d on Broadway versus one at home on the couch would have a more transformative experience, however.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wants to watch a theatrical play on television. There\u2019s a reason for that,\u201d he says. \u201cThe quality of the music on a home stereo is vastly superior to that of a live concert, and yet the experience of attending the live event will be far more impactful for most people. It\u2019s a fundamentally different experience. It does things for people that just listening to music at home doesn\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Xygalatas also is appearing in season 2, episode 208 of <\/em>\u201cThe World According to Jeff Goldblum,\u201d which was released Jan. 19 on Disney+. In the episode \u201cBirthdays,\u201d Xygalatas talks with Goldblum about firewalking.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research demonstrates that the in-person experience is richer than watching an event on TV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":181009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1712,2226,2459,2076,2235,2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-180978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-clas","category-graduate-students","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 01:37:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180978"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181010,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180978\/revisions\/181010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/181009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180978"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=180978"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=180978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}