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Emotional Connections Through Coordinated Group Action, Such as Dancing
Emotional connections may have evolved as coordinated group action, a mechanism to synchronize the mood of all the members of a coalition, to prepare everybody, regardless of kinship status, to act as a group. Motor activities that have a strong rhythmic aspect, such as walking and running, may have become ritualized in body movements such as group dancing.
The biologists Edward Hagan and Gregory Bryant have provided experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that music and dancing in groups evolved initially as a coalition signalling system—a way of communicating to others the competence or “quality” of a group. Coalition signalling would likely have evolved from territorial defence signalling, common in other primates.
Coordinated emotional expression of a group amplifies coordinated action. Groups that can successfully demonstrate coordinated solidarity show strength and intimidate would-be attackers. This is why riot police form into coordinated phalanxes, march rhythmically, and beat their shields in time.
Before language evolved, our increasingly social hominid ancestors would have needed some mechanism of identifying, among non-kin, whether all or some of an aggregation of other individuals actually constituted a group, a clique with a purpose. Coalition signalling would help explain the origin of human abilities to identify and evaluate the membership and purpose of a group, and whether or not it would be mutually beneficial to become a member.