October 2020, ScientificAmerican.com 67RAJESH JANTILAL
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in synchrony expressed a greater sense of closeness and
indicated more desire to see their partners again.
The scientists do not know how long such effects
might last, so coordination may not be a permanent rem-
edy for antagonism. Still, it does appear to minimize bias
in some situations, and one possible reason may be
because it simply makes us like one another more. In a
study published in 2009 in Social Cognition, participants
tapped their fingers in rhythm with a metronome and in
some instances were joined by an experimenter who
drummed either to the same beat or to a different one.
Results showed that volunteers who were coordinated
with the experimenter were later more inclined to say
that they found him likable.
These feelings of affinity translate into more posi-
tive behavior toward others. Synchronous finger tap-
ping, for example, can prompt people to be more gen-
erous when donating money. In a series of experiments
published in 2017 in Basic and Applied Social Psychol-
ogy, researchers divided volunteers into groups of six,
which were then further split into subgroups of three.
After members briefly worked together on a group activ-
ity, they were given various scenarios for splitting mon-
ey among themselves and asked to whom they would
give. If they then spent time tapping fingers in synchro-
ny with their little trio only, they were more willing to
donate money to those people. But if two of these trios
tapped in sync—forming a group of six for a few min-
utes—the members were more likely to donate to all six.Asynchronous tapping, meanwhile, did nothing to
boost generosity. A 2017 meta-analysis of 42 studies con-
firmed that synchronous activities, from running in
sync to rocking in chairs at the same pace, prompt peo-
ple to behave prosocially.
Psychologists and neuroscientists explain the way
synchrony draws people together with a dry term: self-
other blurring. “It’s a weakening of boundaries between
self and other. As we become attuned to other people’s
actions, whether we do it consciously or not, we integrate
them with our own,” says Ivana Konvalinka, a cognitive
neuroscientist at the Technical University of Denmark.
Even very small children tend to be more helpful
after engaging in synchrony. Babies cannot be told to
act in sync, of course, so researchers have come up with
creative ways to examine the effect. In one experiment
published in 2017 in Music Perception, a person had a
14-month-old infant strapped to his or her chest in a
baby carrier and another person standing in front of
them. Both adults began to bounce, sometimes in per-
fect synchrony, sometimes not. This made the babies
bounce, too. Psychologists conducted a series of exper-
iments using this design. After the in-unison bouncing
session, if the second adult dropped a ball or other
object, the babies were quite eager to pick it up and
hand it back. But those infants who were not bounced
in sync were not as helpful. The fact that the effects of
synchrony are apparent in such small children suggests
this behavior is important to the species, says cognitivePERFORMERS
move as a group
for ingoma,
a traditional
Zulu dance in
South Africa.© 2020 Scientific American