Dynamics of Simultaneous and Imitative Bodily Coordination in Trust and Distrust

Abstract

Body synchronization between interacting people involves coordinative movements in time, space and form. The introduction of newer technologies for automated video analysis and motion tracking has considerably improved the accurate measurement of coordination, particularly in temporal and spatial terms. However, the form of interpersonal coordination has been less explored. In the present study we address this gap by exploring the effect of trust on temporal and morphological patterns of interpersonal coordination. We adapted an optical motion-capture system to record spontaneous body movements in pairs of individuals engaged in natural conversations. We conducted two experiments in which we manipulated trust through a breach of expectancy (Study 1: 10 trustful and 10 distrustful participants) and friendship (Study 2: 20 dyads of friends and 20 dyads of strangers). In Study 1, results show the participants' strong, early mirror-like coordination in response to the confederates' breach of trust. In Study 2, imitative coordination tended to be more pronounced in pairs of friends than in pairs of non-friends. Overall, our results show not only that listeners move in reaction to speakers, but also that speakers react to listeners with a chain of dynamic coordination patterns affected by the immediate disposition of, and long-term relationship with, their interlocutors.

Measuring Dynamics of Infant-Adult Synchrony Through Mocap

“…Importantly, they have achieved to establish that the correlations at time-delay between infant-mother and infantfather behaviors range from 0.16 to 0.20 (Feldman, 2003(Feldman, , 2007Feldman et al, 2011). This finding suggests that infantcaregiver interactions display higher correlations than those informed between familiar and unfamiliar adults chattingranging from 0.01 to 0.11 (Boker et al, 2002;Ramseyer and Tschacher, 2011;Paxton and Dale, 2013a;Cornejo et al, 2018). In sum, the temporal dynamics of parent-infant synchrony are well documented.…”

“…The spontaneous tendency to synchronize body movements in time, space, and form seems to be a ubiquitous feature in face-to-face social encounters (Bernieri and Rosenthal, 1991;Rio and Warren, 2016;Cornejo et al, 2017a). It has been observed in social exchanges between known and unknown adults (Latif et al, 2014;Cornejo et al, 2018), musical improvisations between unknown preschoolers (Endedijk et al, 2015), and daily life routines between parents and their infants (Reyna et al, 2012). In the field of child development, infant-adult harmonious synchronization at the sub-second time scale was initially documented by Condon and Sander (1974).…”

“…For example, the imitator moves her right hand while the model moves her right hand. In spontaneous interactions, these morphological patterns of coordination have only been described in pairs of known and unknown adults engaging in conversations (Cornejo et al, 2018). Importantly, it has been suggested that anatomical imitation -and not the mirror-like one -may be related to perspective taking skills (Dunphy-Lelii, 2014;Pierpaoli et al, 2014).…”

“…Given the limited utility of observational methods for the accurate measurement of the forms of synchronization, we used a motion capture system (henceforth: mocap) to track dyadic interactions. Through this technique, a previous study with adults succeeded in recording accurate and detailed measurements of the dyadic synchrony attributes (Cornejo et al, 2018), such as time (e.g., zero-lag or time-delayed), space (e.g., amplitude and direction of synchronized motions), and form (e.g., mirror-like and anatomical coordination).…”

Paired walkers with better first impression synchronize better

“…Body synchrony during natural conversation also promotes rapport in non-clinical settings. Cornejo et al [16] conducted a similar motion energy analysis of recorded natural conversation within pairs, and they discovered that body synchrony was positively associated with interpersonal trust. Kato, Hirose and Kashino [17] examined the antecedents and consequences of walking step synchrony in a real-world scenario by pairing strangers meeting for the first time and having them walk outdoors while engaging in casual conversation.…”