By ALBERT STUMM, Associated Press

With a runway of smoking-hot coals laid out before them, residents in San Pedro Manrique, Spain, steel themselves as thousands of onlookers cheer them on. The crowd roars when they walk across the fire, sometimes carrying another person on their back.

Although the walkers and the crowd perform very different roles during the annual June ritual, they report similar feelings: an ineffable feeling of togetherness , as if the entire group becomes one, said Dimitris Xygalatas, a cognitive anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, who witnessed the Spanish ritual years ago as a researcher.

He has experienced similar feelings in a stadium while chanting and cheering together with 30,000 fans of his hometown soccer team. Both are instances of collectiv

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