How mirroring body movements affects our feelings
Moving in sync with another person during a conversation naturally boosts positive emotions and reduces negative ones, even if the interaction is competitive.
Source
Nonverbal synchrony and affect in dyadic interactions
What they did
Researchers recorded 168 participants paired into 84 same-sex dyads as they engaged in short discussions. These discussions included both cooperative and competitive debates on social topics, plus a final humorous task. Using automated video analysis, they tracked physical coordination and asked participants to report their emotions before and after each interaction.
What they found
The researchers found that physical synchrony occurred at above-chance levels in all interactions, with the highest levels seen during the humorous task. Synchrony predicted an increase in positive feelings and a decrease in negative feelings after the interactions. Analysis of the timing of these ratings suggested that physical synchrony drove the changes in emotion, rather than participants' pre-existing moods causing them to move in sync.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This study only included same-sex pairings, meaning the findings might not apply to interactions between men and women. Additionally, the participants were highly educated university students, which limits how well these results represent the general public. Finally, because the humorous task was always completed last, the study cannot rule out the possibility that fatigue or habituation over time influenced the high coordination and low negative affect seen in that specific task.
Key terms
- nonverbal synchrony
- The spontaneous coordination of body movements, gestures, and postures between individuals during a social interaction.
- motion energy analysis
- An objective, automated method of tracking movement by analyzing frame-by-frame pixel changes in video recordings.
- embodiment
- The psychological concept that cognitive and emotional processes are deeply interconnected with physical bodily states and movements.
- Granger-causality
- A statistical concept that determines if one time-series variable can predict another, used here to infer the direction of cause and effect based on temporal order.
- dyad
- A social group consisting of two people interacting with one another.
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Common questions
Did participants know their movements were being analyzed?
No, participants were not told that the study was tracking physical synchronization. They were told the video recording was to evaluate their verbal negotiation performance.
Why did competitive debates have higher synchrony than cooperative ones?
The researchers suggest that the competitive debates were highly engaging and emotionally stimulating, which may have led to greater physiological and physical entrainment than the quieter cooperative task.
How did the researchers make sure the synchrony wasn't just accidental?
They generated 'pseudointeractions' by randomly shuffling and pairing data from different participants who never actually interacted, showing that genuine interactions had significantly more coordination than these randomized controls.
Does physical coordination guarantee that people like each other?
While physical coordination is strongly linked to positive emotions and relationship quality, this study shows it can also occur during competitive, high-arousal debates without necessarily meaning the partners agree.
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