Influences on and Measures of Unintentional Group Synchrony

Abstract

Many instances of large-scale coordination occur in real-life social situations without the explicit awareness of the individuals involved. While the majority of research to date has examined dyadic interactions – those between two individuals – during intentional or deliberate coordination, the present review surveys the handful of recent studies investigating behavioral and physiological synchrony across groups of more than two people when coordination was not an explicit goal. Both minimal (e.g., visual information, shared location) and naturalistic (e.g., choir voice section, family relationship) group interactions appear to promote unintentional group synchrony although they have so far only been studied separately. State differences in unintentional group synchrony, or the relative presence of coordination in various conditions, have tended to be assessed differently, such as using correlation-type relationships, compared to its temporal dynamics, or changes over time in the degree of coordination, which appear to be best captured using phase differences. Simultaneously evaluating behavioral, physiological, and social responses as well systematically comparing different synchrony measures could further our understanding of the influences on and measures of group synchrony, allowing us to move away from studying individual persons responding to static laboratory stimuli and toward investigating collective experiences in natural, dynamic social interactions.

Examining shared monitoring in collaborative learning: A case of a recurrence quantification analysis approach

“…In addition, our findings revealed that interactions at the content space of collaboration could produce PS, even in the absence of the emotional or motivational regulation that takes place at the relational space. It should be noted that investigation of PS in team collaboration is still in its infancy and standard measures of PS are no yet developed (Ellamil et al, 2016). Thus, the current study is not conclusive and could be regarded as a preliminary attempt to unearth SSRL processes with PS.…”

“…Physiological synchrony (PS) refers to the relation between physiological responses of interacting individuals as they perform a collaborative task (Henning, Armstead, & Ferris, 2009). PS develops spontaneously and unintentionally, and thus, can be indexed by measuring responses of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) (Ellamil, Berson, & Margulies, 2016;Palumbo, Marraccini, Weyandt, Wilder-Smith, McGee, Liu, & Goodwin, 2016;Strang, Funke, Russell, Dukes, & Middendorf, 2014). Electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) activity are considered popular measures derived from the ANS.…”

Physiological synchrony of the autonomic nervous system - an analysis and comparison of different methods

“…Physiological synchrony (PS) is defined as the temporal alignment or correspondence in physiological activity between two or more interacting individuals (Ellamil et al, 2016;Helm et al, 2018;Palumbo et al, 2017). PS can happen unintentionally and automatically (Ellamil et al, 2016), and has been found in different species (Ham et al, 2023) as well as between species (Keeling et al, 2009). In humans, PS is linked to important components of social inter-actions, such as mimicry of gestures and facial expression, emotional contagion (i.e.…”

Influence of stress on physiological synchrony in a stressful versus non-stressful group setting

“…The co-occurrence and interdependence of changes in physiological reaction across interaction partners is called physiological synchronization [Ellamil et al (2016); Palumbo et al (2017), PS;], also referred to as empathic resonance or linkage. This cross-reactivity among group members or dyads has emerged as an important phenomenon to consider when investigating social processes.…”