A calming cacophony: Social identity can shape the experience of loud noise

Seeing our self reflected in the world around us: The role of identity in making (natural) environments restorative

“…Interestingly, these studies have shown that negative environmental conditions, like over-crowding (Alnabulsi & Drury, 2014;Novelli, Drury, Reicher, & Stott, 2013), loud noise (Shankar, Stevenson, Pandey, Tewari, Hopkins & Reicher, 2013), and severe cold (Pandey, Stevenson, Shankar, Hopkins, & Reicher, 2014), can all become positive and enhancing experiences when the environments in which these conditions are encountered embody a sense of shared identity with others. Illustrative of this, Shankar and colleagues (2013) found that levels of noise that met objective definitions of intrusiveness were appraised as more pleasant, interesting, and less uncomfortable, and were listened to longer, by religious pilgrims when they believed that this noise originated from other pilgrims rather than from secular sources.…”

“…IDENTITY AND RESTORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS 34 unpleasant environments are experienced as subjectively uplifting sources of meaning and inspiration (Alnabulsi & Drury, 2014;Novelli et al, 2013;Pandey, et al, 2014;Shankar, et al, 2013).…”

“…Indeed, there was some evidence in our own data that individual differences in nature-based self-definition (i.e., connectedness to nature) guided cognitive responses to natural and urban images in a similar way to our identity manipulation (see Footnote 7). Other studies that have explored identity-based responses to other environmental features have made use of enduring categorical identities, for example, those based on religion (Shankar et al, 2013;Schmitt et al, 2010;Ysseldyk et al, 2016) and gender (Cheryan et al, 2009). …”

Social identification moderates the effect of crowd density on safety at the Hajj

“…noise (25), and cold (26), they did not examine crowd density or safety issues. More specifically, very little social psychological research has been carried out on the Hajj, despite its huge cultural significance and the number of serious crowd accidents that have occurred there in the past.…”

Psychology and Culture: Back to the Future?

“…For example, we found that the cultural beliefs and norms associated with being a kalpwasi shaped their experience of the event's auditory environment (Shankar et al, 2013). So too, we found that the social relations between kalpwasis were shaped by the degree to which they adopted a shared identification.…”