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Strangers in sync: Achieving embodied rapport through shared movements,☆☆

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Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of behavioral synchrony among strangers in the context of self-disclosure, and their path in predicting interaction quality. Specifically, we hypothesize that behavioral synchrony mediates the direct effect of self-disclosure on the development of embodied rapport. Same-sex stranger pairs (n = 94) were randomly assigned to a video recorded self-disclosure or control condition, and afterward each member rated their social interaction. Following the procedure used by Bernieri, Reznick, and Rosenthal (1988), two trained judges independently watched each video record and rated each pair interaction on behavioral synchrony. Bootstrapping analyses provide support for the hypothesized mediating effect of behavioral synchrony, which emerged as independent of the effects of self-other overlap and positive affect. The authors discuss implications of behavioral synchrony for relationship formation processes and the inevitable entwinement of behavior and judgments in light of embodied cognition.

Highlights

► Synchrony is observed as a behavioral process variable in relationship formation. ► Stranger dyads randomly assigned to self-disclose report more embodied rapport. ► Stranger dyads randomly assigned to self-disclose display more synchrony. ► Synchrony mediates the direct effect of self-disclosure on embodied rapport. ► Results control for indirect effects of self-other overlap and positive affect.

Introduction

Knowing that quality social relationships are critical for personal health (e.g., Snyder & Lopez, 2002), it is important to understand the interpersonal micro-moments–the “building blocks”–of successful relationship formation. Acts of self-disclosure with strangers, be it informally on a morning subway commute or formally at a structured event like speed-dating, are a common step toward building social relationships. Turns out, a mechanism by which self-disclosure is effective involves the unspoken, shared physical movements of the interactants.

The present study employs behavioral coding of same-sex stranger dyads during instances of self-disclosure, and results point to the spontaneous act of people moving together in time and space as a key element that promotes quality interaction—namely, embodied rapport. Whereas rapport is traditionally defined by interactants' perceptions of positivity and mutuality (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1990), recent findings on embodied cognition suggest that the bodily aspects of rapport have thus far gone under-appreciated. Consistent with embodied cognition's thesis that people's perceptions and judgments reflect their own motor and bodily experiences (see Niedenthal, 2007), we propose that rapport reflects interactants' physically shared motions, emotions, and vitality. In particular, beyond perceptions of positivity and mutuality, we propose that shared feelings of vitality and aliveness–bodily sensations theorized to stem from shared movements (McNeill, 1995)–are also keys element of what we here term embodied rapport.1

General cultural observations suggest that behavioral synchrony fosters a sense of “oneness” that brings people together: religious activities, military drilling, and rituals among sports teams involve rich amounts of common rhythms to which people can move in synchrony (McNeill, 1995). Infant–caretaker dyads also illustrate how synchronous behaviors guide relational and social development (Feldman, 2007). Beginning around three-months of age, for example, when infants begin to recognize and respond to others' facial expressions, gaze, vocal, and touch patterns, they notably achieve synchrony with their caretakers: a dyadic and consequential dance between caretaker and infant in recognizing and reciprocating affective states emerges (Weinberg & Tronick, 1996).

Behavioral synchrony is the coordination of movement that occurs between individuals during a social interaction, featuring similarity of (1) form, the manner and style of movements, and (2) time, the temporal rhythm of movements (Kimura & Daibo, 2006). Early studies of behavioral synchrony utilized a coding procedure developed by Bernieri, Reznick, and Rosenthal (1988) based on the assumption that Gestalt qualities of behavioral synchrony are apparent and perceivable by human observers. As judged by observers, successful language acquisition results from behavioral synchrony between newborn infants' movements and adult speech patterns (Condon & Sander, 1974), and increased rapport within teacher–student dyads stems from behavioral synchrony (Bernieri, 1988). More recently, experimental manipulations of synchrony show that it breeds compassion (Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2011), cooperation (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009), affiliation (Hove & Risen, 2009), emotional support satisfaction (Jones & Wirtz, 2007), and even elevated pain thresholds (Cohen, Ejsmond-Frey, Knight, & Dunbar, 2010).

We see instances of self-disclosure as a sensible starting point for exploring our questions about behavioral synchrony and embodied rapport among strangers, particularly given its well-known ability to generate social closeness.

Self-disclosure involves revealing and sharing personal information about oneself, including facts, anecdotes, opinions, and emotions, to another person (Jourard, 1959), and evidence suggests that self-disclosure promotes relationships through mechanisms of liking and positive affect (Collins and Miller, 1994, Strong and Aron, 2006). One way self-disclosure is experimentally induced is through Aron's closeness paradigm (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997), wherein participants within dyads alternate asking and answering questions that progressively reveal more information—in other words, progressively self-disclose. This paradigm has been successfully adapted by several researchers (e.g., Kashdan & Roberts, 2004), and has been shown to produce neuroendocrine changes even when used in abbreviated form (Brown et al., 2009). Consistent with evidence of self-disclosure's benefits for relationships, we seek to demonstrate a direct effect of self-disclosure on embodied rapport using Aron's paradigm (H1).

One mechanism through which Aron's paradigm works is through self-expansion, the self-reported broadening of one's self-concept to include another person's beliefs, values, and feelings (Aron, Aron, & Norman, 2001). If people are indeed psychologically experiencing self-other overlap with another as a result of self-disclosure, then perhaps their behavioral experience is altered as well. That is, if information processing involves one's own motor experience, as suggested by research on embodied cognition, then we speculate that self-disclosure not only induces “oneness” psychologically but also behaviorally, manifest as synchronized body movements.

In this study, we experimentally induce self-disclosure and use behavioral coding to investigate our second hypothesis that self-disclosure increases behavioral synchrony, which in turn works as a mechanism to facilitate embodied rapport (H2). To our knowledge, this is the first paper to look at behavioral synchrony as it emerges spontaneously in a same-sex stranger–stranger dyadic interaction, with consideration of how it relates to interpersonal connections.

Section snippets

Participants

Ninety-four same-sex participant pairs (41 male: 19 same-race, 22 cross-race; 53 female: 22 same-race, 31 cross-race; Mage = 19.41 years) were recruited for a study on social coordination across two recruitment waves. Compensation was $25 in Wave 1 and course credit in Wave 2.

Experimental procedure

First, each participant pair was randomly assigned to complete one of two partner interaction tasks, each designed to last for 20 min. Pairs randomly assigned to the self-disclosure task completed an abbreviated version of

Descriptive statistics

Of the 94 pairs considered, 45 were randomly assigned to the self-disclosure task and 49 to the control task. Across both conditions, the mean interaction time was 18.03 min (SD = 3.02). See Table 1 for raw means by condition and Table 2 for correlations among pair-level variables.

Manipulation check

We fit multilevel models with individuals nested within dyads (Hox, 2002) to assess the impact of the self-disclosure task. Consistent with the self-expansion model (Aron et al., 2001), results show that self-disclosure

Discussion

This experiment provides the first empirical demonstration of behavioral synchrony's role in fostering embodied rapport. Specifically, stranger–stranger dyads randomly assigned to complete a self-disclosure task, compared to dyads who did not self-disclose, were judged to be moving together more as one orchestrated unit during their social interaction, which in turn predicted higher ratings of positivity, mutuality, and vitality in the interaction. Noteworthy methods in this study that enrich

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    This work was supported by NIMH Grant MH59615.

    ☆☆

    We thank Sara Algoe, Ben Rosen, Sophie Trawalter, and current PEPLab members for comments on earlier drafts; Michael D. Cohen for data collection and reduction consultation; UNC undergraduates Jana Lembke, Laura Mannie, and Andrew Paschal for videocoding dedication.

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