Abstract
Cooperation is pivotal for society to flourish. To foster cooperation, humans express and read intentions via explicit signals and subtle reflections of arousal visible in the face. Evidence is accumulating that humans synchronize these nonverbal expressions and the physiological mechanisms underlying them, potentially influencing cooperation. The current study is designed to verify this putative linkage between synchrony and cooperation. To that end, 152 participants played the Prisoner’s Dilemma game in a dyadic interaction setting, sometimes facing each other and sometimes not. Results showed that synchrony in both heart rate and skin conductance level emerged during face-to-face contact. However, only synchrony in skin conductance levels predicted cooperative success of dyads. Crucially, this positive linkage was strengthened when participants could see each other. These findings show the strong relationship between our bodily responses and social behavior, and emphasize the importance of studying social processes between rather than within individuals in real-life interactions.
Highlights
Cooperation is pivotal for society to flourish
Investigating the joint outcome, the results showed that the interaction effect between skin conductance level synchrony and Face condition significantly predicted cooperative success (t(2882.33) = 3.24, p = 0.001, f2 = 0.013)
In a post-hoc control analysis, we demonstrated that cooperative success could not be significantly explained by the two individuals’ independent arousal levels suggesting that the effects of the current study cannot be explained by the mere arousal responses of the two individuals
Summary
Cooperation is pivotal for society to flourish. To foster cooperation, humans express and read intentions via explicit signals and subtle reflections of arousal visible in the face. Only synchrony in skin conductance levels predicted cooperative success of dyads. This positive linkage was strengthened when participants could see each other. The current study takes a step in that direction When making decisions, such as whether to cooperate or not, people rely on a variety of nonverbal expressions to communicate their own and predict others’ intentions[2,3]. Research has shown that emotional states tend to synchronize between interaction partners on several levels including the behavioral4, neural[5], and physiological level[6,7]. No studies have been conducted to investigate the direct link between synchrony and cooperative decisions. The most commonly studied physiological responses are skin conductance level, a purely sympathetic nervous system
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