Social bonding happens in time : interpersonal synchronisation in the silent disco

2017

Dance is a fundamentally social activity. Studies have begun to examine the role of movement in music for conveying emotional states, potentially revealing a useful mechanism for the communication of emotions, while other studies have found that joint synchrony increases interpersonal affiliation. However, music and movement studies have focused on individuals and comparatively few studies have involved multiple simultaneous participants. The aim of the proposed research is to examine the importance of synchrony in a dance setting for building interpersonal affiliation. This was tested using a Silent Disco scenario, in which participants heard the music in slightly different timing to each …