Abstract
Although it is well established that rhythmically coordinating with a social partner can increase cooperation, it is as yet unclear when and why intentional coordination has such effects. We distinguish three dimensions along which explanations might vary. First, pro-social effects might require in-phase synchrony or simply coordination. Second, the effects of rhythmic movements on cooperation might be direct or mediated by an intervening variable. Third, the pro-social effects might occur in proportion to the quality of the coordination, or occur once some threshold amount of coordination has occurred. We report an experiment and two follow-ups which sought to identify which classes of models are required to account for the positive effects of coordinated rhythmic movement on cooperation. Across the studies, we found evidence (1) that coordination, and not just synchrony, can have pro-social consequences (so long as the social nature of the task is perceived), (2) that the effects of intentional coordination are direct, not mediated, and (3) that the degree of the coordination did not predict the degree of cooperation. The fact of inter-personal coordination (moving together in time and in a social context) is all that's required for pro-social effects. We suggest that future research should use the kind of carefully controllable experimental task used here to continue to develop explanations for when and why coordination affects pro-social behaviors.
Highlights
It is well-established that moving in time with other people can increase cooperation between coactors (Anshel and Kipper, 1988; Wiltermuth and Heath, 2009; Kirschner and Tomasello, 2010; Reddish et al, 2013, 2014; but see Kirschner and Ilari, 2014), though, it is still unclear what it is about these Coordinated Rhythmic Movement (CRM) tasks that makes people more cooperative
The current studies demonstrated that people who engage in a simple CRM task are more cooperative post task than people who engage in a control task
Our results indicate that this effect (1) follows from coordination generally, not just in-phase synchrony, (2) is indirect, in that coordination must occur in a social context; but direct in that the effect does not depend on coordination causing changes in mediating variables, and (3) is not proportional to individual level coordination performance
Summary
It is well-established that moving in time with other people can increase cooperation between coactors (Anshel and Kipper, 1988; Wiltermuth and Heath, 2009; Kirschner and Tomasello, 2010; Reddish et al, 2013, 2014; but see Kirschner and Ilari, 2014), though, it is still unclear what it is about these Coordinated Rhythmic Movement (CRM) tasks that makes people more cooperative. Previous work has identified a number of interesting effects and it is time to begin trying to explain why these effects occur. The purpose of this paper is to try to lay the groundwork for developing an explanation of the pro-social effects of coordination. We do this by tackling a number of basic questions about the effect using a single, well-understood, CRM paradigm.
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