Synchrony and Cooperation

Abstract

Armies, churches, organizations, and communities often engage in activities-for example, marching, singing, and dancing-that lead group members to act in synchrony with each other. Anthropologists and sociologists have speculated that rituals involving synchronous activity may produce positive emotions that weaken the psychological boundaries between the self and the group. This article explores whether synchronous activity may serve as a partial solution to the free-rider problem facing groups that need to motivate their members to contribute toward the collective good. Across three experiments, people acting in synchrony with others cooperated more in subsequent group economic exercises, even in situations requiring personal sacrifice. Our results also showed that positive emotions need not be generated for synchrony to foster cooperation. In total, the results suggest that acting in synchrony with others can increase cooperation by strengthening social attachment among group members.

Resilience and mental health

“…However, a substantial challenge is of course the wide variety of cultural and linguistic differences in conceptions and meanings of mental health. Another challenge is to distinguish whether a particular group-level effect is related to a specific cultural factor or social context (externally provided for individuals), or to a genetic resilience resource (internally retrieved by individuals) in ethnically homogeneous groups (Voracek & Loibl, 2008;Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009;McCormick, Frey, Lee, Gajic, Stamatovic-Gajic, & Maksimovic, 2009): for example Japanese women experiencing relatively few physical and emotional symptoms in the peri-menopausal period (Steiner, Dunn, & Born, 2003). It has thus been proposed that these findings may not only indicate cultural differences but also may reflect the influence of biological, genetic and nutritional/dietary factors (Lock, 1994;Nagata, Takatsuka, Inaba, Kawakami, & Shimizu, 1998).…”

Dance as a subject for empirical aesthetics.

“…The pleasure of "moving in synchrony" appears to be common to all human cultures (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). It is observable in the protolanguage of mothers and their children (Schögler & Trevarthen, 2007;Trevarthen & Daniel, 2005), in the rhythmicity of human non-verbal communication, and in dance.…”

“…It is observable in the protolanguage of mothers and their children (Schögler & Trevarthen, 2007;Trevarthen & Daniel, 2005), in the rhythmicity of human non-verbal communication, and in dance. Thus, dance has often been considered a crucial cohesion element in human culture (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). It probably served various functions in such activities as prayer, healing and social gathering for special events from its beginnings.…”

Challenges for the understanding of the dynamics of social coordination

“…Minimally it seems readily feasible to address the coordination of one discrete and one continuous movement without losing the power and the current framework, but other type of differences between observed and executed movement patterns may have to be envisioned. To close this part, one cannot resist but evoking the studies showing how basic rhythmic behaviors, basically the actions implying a sensorimotor coupling with a periodic event in the environment, like the one introducing originally the present framework of coordination dynamics, are very likely to be originally acquired through social encounters (Kirschner and Tomasello, 2009; Wiltermuth and Heath, 2009). …”