Research
New research finds a surprising downside to bodily synchrony between strangers
PsyPost · By Eric W. Dolan ·
The Brief
- A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B reports that bodily synchrony between strangers can sometimes be linked to less cooperation.
- The finding runs against the widely held assumption that physical synchrony encourages generosity and cooperation.
- The source excerpt describes pairs of strangers but does not give further methodological details.
Why it matters
It challenges a common assumption in social psychology that interpersonal synchrony reliably promotes prosocial behaviour, which matters for researchers who use synchrony as a route to social bonding.
Who’s affected
- social psychologists and behavioural scientists
- #social psychology
- #synchrony
- #cooperation
- #behavioral science
- #prosocial behavior
Falling into physical sync with someone else is widely assumed to encourage generosity and cooperation, yet a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that matching bodily responses can sometimes point in the opposite direction. When pairs of strangers…