It sure gives a strong sense of déja vu to read about the rather easy research on clapping — because we already knew this. Officially though, one got to know only the other day that clapping is contagious. The research does not take you by surprise when it educates you with the finding that neither one’s immediate neighbours’ behaviour nor the quality of the presentation determines the spread of clapping. Instead, it says, clapping builds upon itself.
One rather felt dismayed at Swedish researcher Richard Mann of Uppsala University who is said to have led the research on the behavioural part of clapping, for learning that the rounds of applause he might have received during some of his very articulated extempore before an impressed crowd might not have been received or appreciated at all, and that the claps he might be counting on as the basis of his oratorical success were actually a result of group behaviour of unconscious humans. His research says that all it takes for an applause to come by is simply one person to start, and then the contagion is let loose. Peer pressure among members of the crowd who may not actually know each other leads the rest to follow suit.
Sadly Mann does not stop here. He gives more pain to all public speakers and performers, who may include politicians and preachers alike, that people even pick up the rate at which they clap when they hear more people in the room clapping, and that actually it has nothing to do with their appreciation of who or what they are clapping for because it needs no tipping point. He also says the crowd continues to clap following a performance until someone is brave, bored or tired enough to stop the nonsense of noise that is music to the ears for whom it is intended.
If you have ever been a part of the game on either side of the sound of applause, you may instinctively know that it surely did not require a huge research to come to this heartbreaking conclusion. If you are one, and if you have ever received whatever little applause by a crowd in a hall or auditorium, please know that you have actually been a victim of some sort of cavalier approbation. Because the joining of hands together with a hell lot of people was actually a mere mechanical, socio-psychological and socio-behavioral phenomenon, and not true tokens of the crowd’s appreciation of your feat.
Some speakers stop in the middle of their speech at the very point that tip the clapping, to return a conquering smile of self-admiration and thankfulness, as they wait for the applause to die down. One must know that the length of applause from identical talks are different, sometimes even non-existent. The next time you join hands together, you better take a quick look at your conscience first to know if you are actually in appreciation mode. If you receive clapping by the crowd, you better find the first man who started it all to thank him afterwards for setting the chain reaction in your favour!