Speaker
Description
Cooperation success has long been hypothesized to be causally linked with psychophysiological synchronization. For example, shared synchronous musical experiences elicit synchrony in heartbeats and influences participants’ performance in a cooperation task later. What remains unclear is how psychological synchronization emerges and the exact triggers that help or hinder synchronization. In this study we examine the effect of physiological synchronization between human dyads on cooperation success in two different tasks, a cooperative motor coordination task and communication task with two distinct roles. We tested 52 dyads (16 and 36 same-sex stranger and familiar dyads, respectively) while measuring their heartrate and skin conductance during task performance. We assessed intrapersonal features such as empathy and within-dyad relationships with questionnaires and coded behaviors such as vocalizations, nodding and body movements during tasks. Physiological synchronization during tasks was calculated using Windowed-Cross-Correlation, that allowed us assign leaders and followers of the synchronization. We find that physiological synchronization above chance levels only occurs in the motor-coordination task. Cooperation success in neither task was influenced by physiological synchronization but rather by features of the dyad itself, specifically dyads with high friendship scores outperforming strangers. Furthermore, dyads more similar in their empathy scores outperformed others. Moreover, if the individual leading the synchronization exhibited higher empathy scores, dyads’ success in the motor coordination task increased. Our results suggest that task modality and differences in roles during cooperation matter for the emergence of synchronization and that physiological synchronization might be a byproduct of interactions rather than a cause for cooperation success.
