Shared fluency theory of social cohesiveness: How the metacognitive feeling of processing fluency contributes to group processes

Abstract

A shared fluency theory of social cohesiveness is outlined that accounts for disparate phenomena under a unified framework. This starts from the well-known metacognitive feeling of processing fluency (henceforth fluency), which is the subjective ease with which a mental operation is performed. Fluency is extended to the social domain, and the notion of shared fluency is introduced, consisting of two aspects: interpersonal fluency, or the ease with which two people coordinate their behavior, and shared object fluency, meaning that people exposed to the same objects can process these objects more easily. Fluency theory provides new insights in five domains: religious rituals, Confucian virtue ethics, military drill, culturally shared tastes, and place attachment. After a discussion of strengths and limitations of the shared fluency theory, it is concluded that low-level mechanisms, like fluency, may help explain complex social phenomena and open new avenues for feeling-based interventions relevant at a societal level.