Mohammadamin Saraei, a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, has published a paper in a recent theme issue of Philosophical Transactions B. The study looks at behaviour during an Islamic congregational ritual in order to understand how coordinated actions are occurring.
Please could you tell us about your study?
Synchrony is a fundamental social technology that humans have used throughout history. After years of research, we now know that synchrony enhances social cohesion, creates a shared identity, boosts prosocial behavior, builds trust, and even contributes to our overall well-being. Despite understanding its importance, we still don't fully grasp how synchrony occurs, which limits our ability to tap into its full potential.
In this study, we aimed to explore how synchrony occurs, specifically in the context of the Islamic congregational ritual, Salat al-Jama'ah. We were curious to see whether people synchronize their movements with their nearest neighbors—like how football fans coordinate a wave in a stadium—or if they follow the leader directly, similar to how musicians sync with a conductor. Or, is something more complex happening?
Figure 1. Top: Worshippers in the Salat al Jama'ah are positioned in parallel rows behind the Imam, and women are separated from men by a partition or other means. Bottom: The prayer consists of repetitive units (i.e., Rak'ah). Each unit includes a sequence of movements followed by reciting specific parts of the prayer. In order, this movement sequence includes standing upright, bowing at a 90-degree angle with hands on knees, standing upright, full prostration (with the forehead, palms, and big toes touching the ground), and sitting position with legs folded under the body. The Rak’ah is repeated multiple times in the communal prayer. Images adapted from pngtree.com.
How did you go about researching this?
To explore this, we took our lab equipment into the field—literally. We attended a prayer session with the Islamic community at the University of Connecticut and collected data on heart rate, movement, and social proximity using small, comfortable chest bands that participants wore during the prayer. These devices were unobtrusive, so much so that sometimes participants forgot they were wearing them and left the center still attached.
It’s also worth mentioning that we used surrogate data in our analysis as control groups. By applying a method called Fourier phase transformation, we created a dataset that kept the overall structure of the original signals but removed specific timing relationships. This helped us confirm that our findings were robust and not just due to random chance.
And what did you find out?
We found that synchrony isn’t just about following your nearest neighbor or directly mimicking the Imam. Instead, it’s a dynamic process involving both. Specifically, our findings reveal a dual process: postural alignment appears to be more localized, with worshippers synchronizing their movements with their nearest neighbors, while physiological alignment operates on a broader scale, primarily driven by the central role of the religious leader.
This discovery highlights the significant role of the leader or Imam in collective gatherings. The Imam not only guides the physical synchrony of the group but also influences heart rate synchrony—even though there’s no religious rule or expectation for this. We even noticed that those standing closer to the Imam showed greater synchrony, emphasizing the leader’s impact. So, beyond just explaining how synchrony happens, our study sheds light on the power of a charismatic religious leader, who can affect followers not just mentally but physiologically, for better or worse.
How was your experience of publishing in Philosophical Transactions B?
Personally, publishing in Philosophical Transactions B was a great experience—smooth and quick. The instructions were clear, the journal staff was supportive, and the reviewers’ comments were very helpful in improving the quality of our paper. By being part of a wider theme issue covering similar topics we hope to gain greater exposure of our study and introduce our work to a wider audience.
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This article appears as part of a theme issue ‘Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence’.
