Time-varying similarity of neural responses to musical tension is shaped by physical features and musical themes

The similarity of understanding is important for music experience and communication, but little is understood about the sources of this common knowledge. Although neural responses to the same piece of music are known to be similar across listeners, it remains unclear whether this neural response similarity is linked to musical understanding and the role of dynamic musical attributes in shaping it. Our study addresses this gap by investigating the relationship between neural response similarity, musical tension, and dynamic musical attributes. Using electroencephalography-based inter-subject correlation (EEG-ISC), we examined how the neural response similarity among listeners varies throughout the evaluation of musical tension in the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8. Participants continuously rated the degree of alignment between musical events and their expectations, while neural activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). The results showed that neural response similarity fluctuated in tandem with musical tension, with increased similarity observed during moments of heightened tension. This time-varying neural response similarity was influenced by two dynamic attributes contributing to musical tension: physical features and musical themes. Specifically, its fluctuation was driven by physical features, and the patterns of its variation were modulated by musical themes, with similar time-varying patterns observed across similar thematic materials. These findings offer valuable insight into the role of dynamic musical attributes in shaping neural response similarity, and reveal an important source and mechanism of shared musical understandings.

Collaborative imagination synchronizes representations of the future and fosters social connection in the present

From close friends to people on a first date, imagining a shared future appears fundamental to relationships. Yet, no previous research has conceptualized the act of imagination as a socially constructed process that affects how connected we feel to others. The present studies provide a framework for investigating imagination as a collaborative process in which individuals cocreate shared representations of hypothetical events-what we call collaborative imagination. Across two preregistered studies (N = 244), we provide evidence that collaborative imagination of a shared future fosters social connection in novel dyads-beyond imagining a shared future individually or shared experience in general. Subjective ratings and natural language processing of participants' imagined narratives illuminate the representational features of imagined events shaped by collaborative imagination. Together, the present findings have the potential to shift how we view the structure and function of imagination with implications for better understanding interpersonal relationships and collective cognition.

The Emerging Science of Interacting Minds

For over a century, psychology has focused on uncovering mental processes of a single individual. However, humans rarely navigate the world in isolation. The most important determinants of successful development, mental health, and our individual traits and preferences arise from interacting with other individuals. Social interaction underpins who we are, how we think, and how we behave. Here we discuss the key methodological challenges that have limited progress in establishing a robust science of how minds interact and the new tools that are beginning to overcome these challenges. A deep understanding of the human mind requires studying the context within which it originates and exists: social interaction.

Listeners' effects on autobiographical memory for recent events

The current study tested the effects of attentive versus distracted listening on both speakers and listeners in recall of an autobiographical memory. Participants included 128 pairs of friends who spoke with each other over a video call about recent negative experience that one of them had. Participants were randomly assigned to be speakers or listeners, and listeners were randomly assigned to an attentive and a distracted condition. Memory narratives were coded for factual and interpretive content. Participants returned approximately 4 weeks later, when both speaker and listener separately reported their memories of the prior conversation. Attentive listening was linked both to greater recall by the speaker at time 1 and greater listener recall at time 2, but not to speaker's recall at time 2. Results show the effects of listener contributions to recall in the moment but raise questions as to whether they persist beyond the conversation in many scenarios.

Theory of collective mind

Theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual. Here, we introduce a theory of collective mind: the ascription of a unified mental state to a group of agents with convergent experiences. Rather than differentiation between one's personal perspective and that of another agent, a theory of collective mind requires perspectival unification across agents. We review recent scholarship across the cognitive sciences concerning the conceptual foundations of collective mind representations and their empirical induction through the synchronous arrival of shared information. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.

A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding

Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to having a conversation-whose common feature is the triadic sharing of experience. Current theories of social bonding have no explanation for why humans should have these unique bonding mechanisms. Here we propose a shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Humans evolved to participate with others in unique forms of cooperative and communicative activities that both depend on and create shared experience. Sharing experience in these activities causes partners to feel closer because it allows them to assess their partner's cooperative competence and motivation toward them and because the shared representations created during such interactions make subsequent cooperative interactions easier and more effective.

Toward a Comprehensive, Data-Driven Model of American Political Goals: Recognizing the "Values" and "Vices" Within Both Liberalism and Conservativism

When a person indicates they are "liberal" or "conservative," an important part of what they are communicating is their goals for how they would like society to be structured. However, past theories have described these goals in dramatically different fashions, suggesting that either conservativism or liberalism reflects a divisive or unifying goal. To help overcome this impasse, we systematically compared a broad, representative sample of all possible higher-order goals (drawn a previous lexical investigation of more than 1,000 goals) to the political ideology of American adults (total n = 1,588). The results of five studies suggested that proposals from competing theories are all partially correct. Conservativism simultaneously reflects the unifying "value" of Tradition, as well as the divisive "vice" of Elitism; while Liberalism simultaneously reflects the unifying "value" of Inclusiveness, and the divisive "vice" of Rebellion. These results help to integrate proposals from previous competing theories into a single framework.

Benefits of collaborative remembering in older and younger couples: the role of conversation dynamics and gender

We experimentally explored whether and how conversation dynamics would benefit collaborative remembering in intimate couples over time. To this end, we ran a study with a three-factor mixed design with relationship type (couples vs. strangers) and age (older adults vs. younger adults) as between-participants variables, and remembering condition (collaborative vs. individual) as a within-participants variable. Thirty pairs of intimate couples (fifteen long-term relationship older couples, fifteen short-term relationship younger couples) and thirty pairs of corresponding stranger-pairs (including older strangers and younger strangers) were compared with respect to recall accuracy and conversation dynamics, specifically considering the role of gender. Results revealed significant collaborative facilitation only in older couples. Also, females' communication behaviours facilitated males' collaborative remembering performance only in older (vs. younger) couples. In addition, a gender-specific pattern of shifts from the individual to collaborative context emerged only in older couple (vs. strangers). The findings are consistent with the notion that a longer experience of collaboration and more effective conversation dynamics allow older (vs. younger) couples to perform better at collaborative remembering. We discuss processes underlying the observed gender differences, and the social and motivational implications of collaborative remembering.

Behavioral and neuro-cognitive bases for emergence of norms and socially shared realities via dynamic interaction

In the digital era, new socially shared realities and norms emerge rapidly, whether they are beneficial or harmful to our societies. Although these are emerging properties from dynamic interaction, most research has centered on static situations where isolated individuals face extant norms. We investigated how perceptual norms emerge endogenously as shared realities through interaction, using behavioral and fMRI experiments coupled with computational modeling. Social interactions fostered convergence of perceptual responses among people, not only overtly but also at the covert psychophysical level that generates overt responses. Reciprocity played a critical role in increasing the stability (reliability) of the psychophysical function within each individual, modulated by neural activity in the mentalizing network during interaction. These results imply that bilateral influence promotes mutual cognitive anchoring of individual views, producing shared generative models at the collective level that enable endogenous agreement on totally new targets-one of the key functions of social norms.

Shared understanding and social connection: Integrating approaches from social psychology, social network analysis, and neuroscience

Meaningfully connecting with others is critical to the well-being of individuals. What phenomena contribute to and stem from social connection? In this paper, we integrate emerging work that uses neuroimaging and social network analysis with theories that explore the links between shared reality and social connection. We highlight recent work suggesting that the extent to which people have aligned mental processing and shared subjective construals to those around them-as shown by neural similarity-is associated with both objective and subjective social connection. On the other hand, idiosyncrasies are linked to difficulties with social connection. We conclude by suggesting how the links between shared understanding and social connection can be productively used as a framework to study psychosocial phenomena of interest.

Experimental effects of social behavior on well-being

Subjective well-being is characterized by relatively frequent positive emotions, relatively infrequent negative emotions, and high life satisfaction. Although myriad research topics related to subjective well-being have been explored - from how it should be measured to how it affects physical health - a key finding is that social connections are crucial. Researchers are therefore increasingly exploring whether subjective well-being can be improved through interventions that encourage specific types of social behaviors, including prosociality, gratitude, extraversion, and brief social interactions. We review this recent work, highlighting potential behavioral and psychological mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of such interventions, along with their boundary conditions.

Believing and social interactions: effects on bodily expressions and personal narratives

The processes of believing integrate external perceptual information from the environment with internal emotional states and prior experience to generate probabilistic neural representations of events, i.e., beliefs. As these neural representations manifest mostly below the level of a person's conscious awareness, they may inadvertently affect the spontaneous person's bodily expressions and prospective behavior. By yet to be understood mechanisms people can become aware of these representations and reflect upon them. Typically, people can communicate the content of their beliefs as personal statements and can summarize the narratives of others to themselves or to other people. Here, we describe that social interactions may benefit from the consistency between a person's bodily expressions and verbal statements because the person appears authentic and ultimately trustworthy. The transmission of narratives can thus lay the groundwork for social cooperation within and between groups and, ultimately, between communities and nations. Conversely, a discrepancy between bodily expressions and narratives may cause distrust in the addressee(s) and eventually may destroy social bonds.

Ally endorsement: Exploring allyship cues to promote perceptions of allyship and positive STEM beliefs among White female students

Many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) domains are White-male-dominated; yet, investigations exploring how White men scientists can counter women’s underrepresentation are lacking. We examined whether exposure to a White male scientist endorsed as an ally by a gender ingroup member (i.e., an allyship cue) encouraged identity-safety and positive STEM beliefs among White female students. Relative to a White male scientist without an allyship cue, participants that viewed an endorsed scientist reported greater perceptions of allyship, identity-safety (Experiment 1–3), interest, and self-efficacy in computer science (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 3, we recruited White women in STEM and found that ally endorsement from a White or Black female, but not a White male, promoted identity-safety. Moreover, the endorsed scientist encouraged perceptions that they possessed a shared reality with participants and recognized the bias that women in STEM face. Allyship cues may help White men attract White female students to STEM.

Interpersonal transgressions and psychological loss: Understanding moral repair as dyadic, reciprocal, and interactionist

Following interpersonal transgressions, both victims and offenders can experience psychological loss owing to threatened needs for agency and moral-social identity. Moral repair is the process by which these losses are restored. Rather than involving only intraindividual static processes, research is starting to recognize that moral repair is dyadic, reciprocal, and interactionist. It involves the victim and offender coengaging with one another, reciprocally responding to the other's psychological needs, and coconstructing a shared understanding of what has occurred, their relationship, and a way forward. Each of these steps represents periods of vulnerability where the losses of a transgression can be repaired - or exacerbated.