Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
We synchronize movements with other individuals in our everyday life (e.g., when shaking hands), in sports (e.g., rowing), or on dancefloors. Especially this last kind of social entrainment can lead to states of pleasure and ecstasy. In some situations, we even unintentionally mirror another person's gestures or movements, for example, when we are walking with another person and the phase of our steps becomes aligned with the other person's steps. Depending on the relationship we have with this person, such a situation can be awkward or pleasant. All of these examples show that movement synchronization and social bonding are tightly linked. In the current study, we examined affiliation and pro-social behavior following a synchronous or asynchronous interpersonal tapping task with music or a metronome.Interpersonal Coordination and MusicInterpersonal coordination-be it behavior matching, such as mimicry, or interactional synchrony, such as simultaneous rhythmic movements (Bernieri for a review, see Chartrand Hove Marsh, Richardson, Reddish, Fischer, Valdesolo Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). By using a moving visual timekeeper, Hove and Risen (2009) showed that the degree of synchrony between the participants' and the experimenters' finger-taps was positively related to how much participants liked the experimenter. Such effects may even be stronger when moving together while listening to music: When rocking in a chair with a partner, the degree of synchronization with music is positively correlated with the feeling of interpersonal connectedness (Demos et al., 2012).Listening to music has a strong emotional component and, similarly to social bonding, engages the endogenous opioid system (Tarr, Launay, & Dunbar, 2014). Related to this, Tarr, Launay, and Dunbar (2016) showed that pain thresholds increased after synchronously dancing (i.e., identical movements while listening to the same music) in groups of four. The authors link this effect to the release of endorphins. In contrast, partial synchrony (i. …
Stupacher et al. (Fri,) studied this question.