Intentional synchronisation affects automatic imitation and source memory

Virtual social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic: the effect of interpersonal motor synchrony on social interactions in the virtual space

Although the link between motor synchrony and emotional alignment has been extensively studied during face-to-face interaction, the question of whether this association also exists in virtual settings has remained unanswered. Here, we examined whether this link exists during virtual social interactions and whether pro-social effects will be induced during those interactions. To this end, two strangers shared difficulties they have experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic during a virtual social interaction that included both audio and video. The findings revealed that motor synchrony and emotional alignment can arise spontaneously during a virtual social interaction between two strangers. Moreover, this interaction yielded a decrease in negative affect and an increase in positive affect, as well as an increase in feelings of trust, liking, cohesion, self-other overlap, and similarity between the strangers. Finally, a higher level of synchrony during the virtual interaction was specifically associated with increased positive emotional alignment and liking. It can thus be presumed that virtual social interactions may share similar characteristics and social effects as face-to-face interactions. Considering the tremendous changes the COVID-19 pandemic has caused regarding social communication, these findings may provide grounds for developing new intervention protocols aimed at dealing with the consequences of social distancing.

The fruits of our labour: Interpersonal coordination generates commitment by signalling a willingness to adapt

Countless everyday activities require us to coordinate our actions and decisions with others. Coordination not only enables us to achieve instrumental goals, but has also been shown to boost commitment, leading people to persevere with an interaction even when their motivation wavers. So far, little is known about the mechanism by which coordination generates commitment. To investigate this, we conducted two experiments that represented very different coordination problems: coordination of movement timing on a joint drumming task (Experiment 1) and coordination of decision-making on a joint object matching task (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the similarity of the participant and partner was manipulated by varying whether or not they had perceptual access to the participant's workspace, and the participants' attribution of (un)willingness to invest effort into the joint action by adapting was manipulated by varying whether or not the participant believed their partner had perceptual access. As a measure of commitment, we registered how much participants' persisted on a boring and effortful task to earn points for their partners. Participants were significantly less committed to earning points for unadaptive partners than for adaptive partners, but only when they believed that their partner was unwilling to adapt rather than unable to adapt. This demonstrates that coordination can generate commitment insofar as it provides a cue that one's partner is willing to invest effort to adapt for the good of the interaction. Moreover, we demonstrate that this effect generalises across different kinds of coordination.

Social context facilitates visuomotor synchrony and bonding in children and adults

Interpersonal synchrony is a fundamental part of human social interaction, with known effects on facilitating social bonding. Moving in time with another person facilitates prosocial behaviour, however, it is unknown if the degree of synchronisation predicts the degree of social bonding. Similarly, while people readily fall in synchrony even without being instructed to do so, we do not know whether such spontaneous synchronisation elicits similar prosocial effects as instructed synchronisation. Across two studies, we investigated how context (social vs non-social stimulus) and instruction (instructed vs uninstructed) influenced synchronisation accuracy and bonding with the interaction partner in adults and children. The results revealed improved visuomotor synchrony within a social, compared to non-social, context in adults and children. Children, but not adults, synchronised more accurately when instructed to synchronise than when uninstructed. For both children and adults, synchronisation in a social context elicited stronger social bonding towards an interaction partner as compared to synchronisation in a non-social context. Finally, children's, but not adults', degree of synchrony with the partner was significantly associated with their feelings of social closeness. These findings illuminate the interaction of sensorimotor coupling and joint action in social contexts and how these mechanisms facilitate synchronisation ability and social bonding.

Lost in the crowd: Imagining walking in synchrony with a crowd increases affiliation and deindividuation

Moving in time with others-interpersonal coordination-increases affiliation, helping behaviours and gives rise to a host of other prosocial outcomes. Recent research suggests that merely imagining coordination may lead to similar social effects. In the present study, participants were asked to imagine walking with a crowd in a coordinated (versus uncoordinated) way to explore the effects of imagined coordination on individuals' perceptions of themselves and the crowd. Imagined coordination led to greater levels of deindividuation and affiliation. That is, participants were less likely to report seeing themselves as unique individuals, instead viewing themselves as a part of a group (deindividuation) and more likely to report a sense of emotional closeness (affiliation) with the imagined group. Deindividuation partially mediated the effect of imagined coordination on affiliation. This work establishes that imagined synchrony can be employed online to foster prosocial attitudes towards groups of people, and that a process of deindividuation might mediate this effect.