Paired walkers with better first impression synchronize better

PLoS One. 2020 Feb 21;15(2):e0227880. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227880. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

This study measured automatic walking synchronization and how it associates with social impression. Previous studies discovered positive social consequence of motor synchrony with ecological paradigms (e.g. body movement synchrony between therapists and patients in clinical sessions, and the synchrony of side-by-side walkers). However, most studies of joint movement with high ecological validity face the same challenge, namely that conversations between participants might be the main or a partial contributor to the observed social benefits, as conversation is well documented to promote understanding and motor synchronization. We addressed this issue by using a novel paradigm to remove the conversation component and examined how synchrony per se interacted with social impression. Participants were paired to walk side by side in silence (i.e. without conversation) and their social impression toward each other was rated before/after the paired walk. Our results showed that walkers' first impression was positively associated with their step synchronization rate in the silent paired walk. Together with past findings, the bi-directional relation between body entrainment and social functions suggests that implicit nonverbal communication plays a significant role in providing a basis for interpersonal interaction.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acceleration
  • Communication
  • Confidence Intervals
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Judgment
  • Male
  • Motion
  • Social Adjustment
  • Task Performance and Analysis
  • Time Factors
  • Time Perception
  • Walking / physiology*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

Tseng is supported by the Cooperative Research Project Program from Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tohoku University, Tohoku University Center for Gender Equality Promotion (TUMUG), and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (No. 18H04180) “Construction of the Face-Body Studies in Transcultural Conditions”. These funders do not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, preparation of the manuscript, or alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. NTT corporation provided support in the form of salaries for author MC, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.