Abstract
Embodied synchronization is widely observed in human communication, and is considered to be important in generating empathy during face-to-face communication. However, the quantitative relationship between body motion synchronization and degree of empathy is not fully understood. Therefore, we focused on head motion to investigate phase and frequency differences in head motion synchronization in relation to degree of empathy. We specifically conducted a lecture-based experiment using controlled spoken text divided into two parts: high empathy and low empathy. During the lecture, we measured the acceleration of speakers’ and listeners’ head motions using an accelerometer, and calculated the synchronization between the time-series data from their acceleration norms. The results showed greater head motion synchronization during high empathy. During high empathy, the speakers’ head motions began before those of listeners’ in the medium (2.5 to 3.5 Hz) and high (4.0 to 5.0 Hz) frequency ranges, whereas the speakers’ head motions tended to start later than those of the listeners’ in the low (1.0 to 2.0 Hz) and medium (2.5 to 3.5 Hz) frequency ranges. This suggests that the degree of empathy is reflected by a different relationship between the phase and frequency of head motion synchronization during face-to-face communication.
Highlights
Non-verbal communication channels play an important role for sharing emotional information during human communication
The incidence of head motion synchronization is illustrated by a continuous spectrum of colors from red to blue
To investigate the hypothesis that the phase and frequency relationships of body motion synchronization change according to the degree of empathy during face-to-face communication, we conducted a lecture task experiment using a controlled script divided into high and low empathy sections
Summary
Non-verbal communication channels play an important role for sharing emotional information during human communication. Synchronization of non-verbal behaviors occurs in various forms of social communication, such as between a mother and infant (Meltzoff and Moore, 1983; Bernieri et al, 1988), physician and patient (Koss and Rosenthal, 1997), teacher and student (Bernieri, 1988; Lafrance and Broadbent, 1988), and psychological counselor and client (Ramseyer and Tschacher, 2006; Koole and Tschacher, 2016). Body synchronization between a counselor and a client represents their mutual empathy and relates to their level of satisfaction with counseling (Komori and Nagaoka, 2008; Ramseyer and Tschacher, 2014). Body movement imitation between a teacher and students in educational settings leads to higher levels of rapport and greater satisfaction with learning outcomes (Duffy and Chartrand, 2015). In addition to the social context, neuroscientific bases have been identified for non-verbal behavior synchronization, such as synchronization of brain activities among participants during successful communication (Stephens et al, 2010) and correlations between body movement and brain activity (Yun et al, 2012)
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