Abstract
Previous research has shown that the matching of rhythmic behaviour between individuals (synchrony) increases cooperation. Such synchrony is most noticeable in music, dance and collective rituals. As well as the matching of behaviour, such collective performances typically involve shared intentionality: performers actively collaborate to produce joint actions. Over three experiments we examined the importance of shared intentionality in promoting cooperation from group synchrony. Experiment 1 compared a condition in which group synchrony was produced through shared intentionality to conditions in which synchrony or asynchrony were created as a by-product of hearing the same or different rhythmic beats. We found that synchrony combined with shared intentionality produced the greatest level of cooperation. To examinef the importance of synchrony when shared intentionality is present, Experiment 2 compared a condition in which participants deliberately worked together to produce synchrony with a condition in which participants deliberately worked together to produce asynchrony. We found that synchrony combined with shared intentionality produced the greatest level of cooperation. Experiment 3 manipulated both the presence of synchrony and shared intentionality and found significantly greater cooperation with synchrony and shared intentionality combined. Path analysis supported a reinforcement of cooperation model according to which perceiving synchrony when there is a shared goal to produce synchrony provides immediate feedback for successful cooperation so reinforcing the group’s cooperative tendencies. The reinforcement of cooperation model helps to explain the evolutionary conservation of traditional music and dance performances, and furthermore suggests that the collectivist values of such cultures may be an essential part of the mechanisms by which synchrony galvanises cooperative behaviours.
Highlights
In all cultures around the world [1,2,3] and far back into human history [4,5], people have come together to sing and dance
Despite variance in expressions and contexts of collective music and dance performances, one common underlying factor found in most forms of collective music and dance is the matching of rhythmic behaviours amongst performers
For the remainder of the 119 participants, there were no significant differences across conditions in how well participants knew each other before the study (Fmax = .89, p = .45)
Summary
In all cultures around the world [1,2,3] and far back into human history [4,5], people have come together to sing and dance. One popular explanation is that collective music and dance bonds people together and increases cooperation [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15] Such an important function in human sociality could explain music and dance’s ubiquity and its selection and retention. Observations from ethnographies [16,17,18,19,20,21], historical analysis [22,23], and experimental research [24,25] support this social bonding hypothesis It is not yet clear through what mechanism music and dance might produce this effect. Behavioural synchrony has been linked with greater social bonding and cooperation suggesting that such synchrony could be one of the key mechanism behind collective music and dance’s prosocial effect [27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]
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