Interpersonal Autonomic Physiology: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

Interpersonal autonomic physiology is defined as the relationship between people's physiological dynamics, as indexed by continuous measures of the autonomic nervous system. Findings from this field of study indicate that physiological activity between two or more people can become associated or interdependent, often referred to as physiological synchrony. Physiological synchrony has been found in both new and established relationships across a range of contexts, and it correlates with a number of psychosocial constructs. Given these findings, interpersonal physiological interactions are theorized to be ubiquitous social processes that co-occur with observable behavior. However, this scientific literature is fragmented, making it difficult to evaluate consistency across reports. In an effort to facilitate more standardized scholarly approaches, this systematic review provides a description of existing work in the area and highlights theoretical, methodological, and statistical issues to be addressed in future interpersonal autonomic physiology research.

Impact of humor‐related communication elements in natural dyadic interactions on interpersonal physiological synchrony

“…On a broader perspective, the findings of the present study are in line with the idea that physiological synchrony may be enhanced by shared experience (Palumbo et al, ). The use of humor in a dyadic conversation implies communalities in the interlocutors’ construals (Flamson & Barrett, ).…”

“…Basically, physiological synchrony can be assessed using any physiological measure that is collected from two individuals over time. However, findings may vary with the physiological measures obtained (Palumbo et al, ), putatively depending, among other factors, on how sensitive the physiological system responds to relevant psychosocial processes. In the present article, we focus on heart rate synchrony.…”

Measuring physiological influence in dyads: A guide to designing, implementing, and analyzing dyadic physiological studies.

“…We discuss how the consideration of context, as well as measuring other variables, can be used to do this in Part 2 of the paper. Physiological influence between two dyad members is often related to social processes, such as the spread of emotions between people or the sensitivity of one dyad member to another (see Palumbo et al, 2016). For ease of clarity, we refer to the dyad member being influenced as the receiver and the person who is influencing as the sender.…”

“…Early work focused on how similarity between patients' and therapists' heart rates mapped onto behavioral processes such as rapport and antagonism (Coleman, Greenblatt, & Soloman, 1956;DiMascio, Boyd, & Greenblatt, 1957). Since that time, physiological influence has been used to study romantic couples, parent-child dyads, and newly-acquainted dyads and teams, and influence has been associated with relationship quality, individual differences like attachment, and the development of self-regulation and trust (Hill-Soderlund et al, 2008;Levenson & Gottman, 1983;Mitkidis, McGraw, Roepstorff, & Wallot, 2015;Suveg, Shaffer, & Davis, 2016; for reviews see Timmons, Margolin, & Saxbe, 2015;Palumbo et al, 2016).A primary strength of studying physiological influence in interpersonal encounters is that it allows scholars to test theoretical questions that are not testable using traditional measures of self-report or behavioral recordings alone. For example, physiological measures can provide continuous information about participants' emotional states-including those that are outside of awareness and may not be readily observable (Blascovich & Mendes, 2010); they are also not subject to the same demand effects that can bias self-reported data.…”

Intergroup dissimilarity predicts physiological synchrony and affiliation in intergroup interaction

“…Physiological synchrony is associated with both beneficial relational outcomes such as empathy (Marci & Orr, 2006), enhanced group performance (Elkins, Muth, Hoover, Walker, Carpenter, & Switzer, 2009), and increased social presence (Chanel et al, 2012), but also detrimental relational outcomes such as marital dissatisfaction (Levenson & Gottman, 1983) and mutual dislike (Kaplan, Burch, & Bloom, 1964). In order to disentangle the meaning of physiological synchrony, self-report and behavioral measures are critical to triangulating the interpersonal meaning of this internally shared state (Palumbo, et al, 2016). In the current study, we used behavioral and self-report measures of participant and partner affiliation and friendship initiation to complement our measure of physiological synchrony.…”