Behavioural Asynchrony Taints the Interaction Context
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1
University of Birmingham, School of Psychology, United Kingdom
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2
DePaul University, Department of Psychology, United States
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3
University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, United States
Behavioural synchrony, relative to asynchrony, appears to promote relationship-salutary outcomes (e.g., liking, cooperation). We explored the possibility that these effects are driven by the deleterious effects of asynchrony rather than the beneficial effects of synchrony. Based on the assumption that individuals tend to expect social interactions to be smooth, we reasoned that synchrony might actually represent a psychological baseline for social interaction expectancies and that the experience of asynchrony might taint the interaction experience. Participants were exposed repeatedly to valence-neutral words and non-words on a computer while simultaneously finger-tapping in time with auditory cues presented via headphones. In the synchrony and asynchrony conditions, two participants performed the task together and were exposed to either synchronous or asynchronous auditory cues; in the control condition, participants took turns completing the task. Although participants’ post-task ratings of the word stimuli did not differ as a function of condition (presumably because of the words’ pre-existing associations1), their ratings of the previously meaningless non-word stimuli supported our reasoning: Participants in the synchrony and control conditions rated the non-word stimuli as valence-neutral, but participants in the asynchrony condition rated the same stimuli as negatively valenced (and as more negative than participants in the other conditions).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
References
1 Cacioppo, J. T., Marshall-Goodell, B. S., Tassinary, L. G., & Petty, R. E. (1992). Rudimentary determinants of attitudes: Classical conditioning is more effective when prior knowledge about the attitude stimulus is low than high. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 207¬–233.
Keywords:
Interpersonal synchrony,
Cognition,
Movement,
Joint Action,
Classical Conditioning
Conference:
14th Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop Birmingham 11th - 13th September 2013, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 11 Sep - 13 Sep, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Rhythm Production and Perception
Citation:
Honisch
JJ,
Quinn
KA and
Cacioppo
JT
(2013). Behavioural Asynchrony Taints the Interaction Context.
Conference Abstract:
14th Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop Birmingham 11th - 13th September 2013.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.214.00010
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Received:
24 Jul 2013;
Published Online:
24 Sep 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Juliane J Honisch, University of Birmingham, School of Psychology, Birmingham, United Kingdom, J.J.Honisch@reading.ac.uk