Sharing a shout out to a sad movie can strengthen connections between people – even if they’re strangers, research has suggested.

Previous studies have shown that touching tissues while watching tragic movies can increase the level of feel-good chemicals produced in the brain known as endorphins.

A new study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggests that sharing emotions with others – while watching a comedy or a sad film – can also boost social bonding.

The team, led by Victor Chung of PSL University in Paris, recruited 112 people between the ages of 18 and 35 and divided them into pairs.

The pairs, who did not know each other, were invited to watch emotional videos together as well as separately.

The researchers monitored their physiological and emotional responses, as well as how they felt about each other after watching the videos together.

The results showed that people felt more connected when they could see each other while watching the videos and when they were both experiencing strong emotions, whether they were positive or negative.

In an online experiment involving 50 people, participants were asked to watch excerpts from the French comedy Intouchables, the documentary Earthlings, which depicts the suffering of captive animals, and a YouTube video designed not to evoke strong emotions.

The team wrote: “Our results supported the hypothesis that emotion has a bonding function, as it could explain how brief interactions with strangers can help satisfy the need to belong to social groups.

“The current study may also explain why people seek group activities that induce intense and arousing emotions, even participating in sad commemorations or participating in dramatic narrative fictions that induce negative emotions.”