Empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination through music

Abstract

Coordinated behavior promotes collaboration among humans. To shed light upon this relationship, we investigated whether and how interpersonal coordination is promoted by empathic perspective taking (EPT). In a joint music-making task, pairs of participants rotated electronic music-boxes, producing two streams of musical sounds that were meant to be played synchronously. Participants – who were not musically trained – were assigned to high and low EPT groups based on pre-experimental assessments using a standardized personality questionnaire. Results indicated that high EPT pairs were generally more accurate in synchronizing their actions. When instructed to lead the interaction, high and low EPT leaders were equally cooperative with followers, making their performance tempo more regular, presumably in order to increase their predictability and help followers to synchronize. Crucially, however, high EPT followers were better able to use this information to predict leaders’ behavior and thus improve interpersonal synchronization. Thus, empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination by enhancing accuracy in predicting others’ behavior while leaving the aptitude for cooperation unaltered. We argue that such predictive capacity relies on a sensorimotor mechanism responsible for simulating others’ actions in an anticipatory manner, leading to behavioral advantages that may impact social cognition on a broad scale.

Music Teachers’ Perspectives and Experiences of Ensemble and Learning Skills

“…As a follower, one needs to listen carefully and blend in with the others to achieve a common musical goal. Although not mentioned explicitly by the respondents, underlying concepts such as trust and empathy seem to be vital ingredients for a successful ensemble performance (see Novembre et al, 2019).…”

Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony

“…both the main effects and the interaction) required correction for multiple comparisons. To do so, we used a cluster-based permutation test ( Maris and Oostenveld, 2007 , see also Novembre et al ., 2019 for a similar application of the test). The cluster-based permutation test is inspired by research in neurophysiology, where scholars normally apply the same test over signals composed of multiple consecutive time points (in our case, across ±5 s time lags; cf.…”

Human Social Evolution: Self-Domestication or Self-Control?

“…Although it is difficult to establish whether musical engagement was directly or indirectly selected when it first appeared, it seems that the ability to engage in musical interactions is strongly related to other traits that are likely to provide fitness benefits, such as improved vocal and motor control, pro-social motivation, as well as good social skills and empathy (Keller et al, 2014;Novembre et al, 2019). Musical engagement could initially have evolved as a particularly engaging form of play and social grooming that was based on synchronous tapping, vocalizations and movements.…”

“…A meta-analysis of music therapy studies concluded that it is effective in reducing pain and anxiety (Kühlmann et al, 2018), something which appears to be related to reducing levels of cortisol and ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone). Listening to soothing music was found to increase oxytocin levels during post-surgery bed rest (Nilsson, 2009), and Kreutz (2014) found that, compared to dyadic chatting, group singing increased oxytocin levels, as well as significantly enhancing perceived psychological well-being. The pleasure derived from listening to music appears to be modulated by dopaminergic reward systems (Ferreri et al, 2019), and a PET study documented dopamine release in striatal regions during both peak arousal and in anticipation of it (Salimpoor et al, 2011).…”