Word: chanting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...beings are naturally skilled at forming groups and communities - which is a very good thing if you want to call yourself a social species. But we often need a little help to find our interpersonal rhythm, and it often comes in ways that involve literal rhythm. Soldiers march and chant. Religions incorporate singing and even dancing in their rituals. Sports events are filled with songs, synchronized cheers, and cries of "DEE-fense." In order to study the power of such collective behaviors, Stanford psychologists Scott S. Wiltermuth and Chip Heath devised a pair of tests. (See pictures of Super Bowl...
...ritual that has evolved over the years. It usually starts with blowing a conch-shell horn to rouse all the members. We walk down the beach, form a larger circle, do some jumping jacks to get the blood flowing. And one of our members always has a chant - a different chant each week that we always do our jumping jacks to. Then we go into the water and form a larger circle there - people are welcome to scream - and then it's a kind of open swim after that. For the past few years, the New York Aquarium...
...Americans might learn a thing or to from the Spaniards; although the Christmas season doesn't really get started until Dec. 22, they do it in style. On that date every year, children from the San Ildefonso School (once an orphanage for boys) sing a three-hour Gregorian chant in which they pick and announce the winning numbers in the world's oldest and - with a total of $3.3 billion given away - by far its biggest lottery. An estimated 3 in 4 Spaniards and thousands of foreigners purchase tickets in the lottery - with more than a million participants expected...
...more bearable, the hosts, Sheik Mohammed al-Hais and his brother Hamid, have laid on some traditional entertainment. A small group of line dancers (all men, naturally) sing paeans to the might and valor of the tribes of Anbar. "Throw us on the enemy, and watch them flee," they chant, to the accompaniment of drums. In centuries past, this is how tribal armies psyched themselves up for battle. (See pictures of Anbar sheiks coming together...
...Harvard band leads a rendition of "the Star-Spangled Banner," and students chant "U-S-A" late Tuesday night after Barack Obama's election...