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When two people move in synchrony, they become more social. Yet, it is not clear how this effect scales up to larger numbers of people. Does a group need to move in unison to affiliate, in what we term unitary synchrony; or does affiliation arise from distributed coordination, patterns of coupled movements between individual members of a group? We developed choreographic tasks that manipulated movement synchrony without explicitly instructing groups to move in uni- son. Wrist accelerometers measured group movement dynamics and we applied cross recurrence analysis to distinguish the temporal features of emergent unitary synchrony (simultaneous move- ment) and distributed coordination (coupled movement). Participants’ unitary synchrony did not predict pro-social behavior, but their distributed coordination predicted how much they liked each other, how they felt toward their group, and how much they conformed to each other’s opinions. The choreography of affiliation arises from distributed coordination of group movement dynamics.

Often music is used to emphasize particular dance gestures, or dance can be used to illustrate particular passages of music. While each form relies on different sensory modalities, previous studies have demonstrated the ability to deduce the common structures between music and dance, even when each form is presented independently. However, from an aesthetic perspective, music and dance are not always used congruently, to emphasize or complement each other, but are sometimes used in competition, or conflict with each other to emphasize the narrative (Fogelsanger & Afanador, 2006). With this deliberate shift in congruency between stimuli, this begs the questions as to whether congruence between stimuli enhances aesthetic judgements for contemporary pieces, in line with the congruence association model. This study aims to empirically test the assertions that altering the congruency between a contemporary dance and soundtrack leads to a different aesthetic perception of the presentation. Thirty-four participants, were randomly assigned to watch a recorded dance performance in a theatre setting, with either the original soundtrack, no soundtrack or the original soundtrack reversed. Aesthetic interaction was measured in terms of continuous enjoyment ratings using an ASUS tablet, and physiological arousal was measured using Empatica 4 wristbands. Granger Causality analysis indicated that rate of visual change of the stimulus granger caused electrodermal activity, for the congruent and incongruent sound conditions, but not for the silent condition. Group enjoyment scores did not mirror group physiological responses; in that they were not predicted by visual change of the performance. Additionally, the silent and congruent conditions were rated as less enjoyable as the incongruent condition. Qualitative data demonstrated that participants found the congruent and silent conditions boring, while they found the incongruent condition unpleasant.

Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreography that continuously manipulated group synchronization using a defined movement vocabulary based on arm swinging, walking and running. The choreography was performed live to four audiences, as we continuously tracked the performers’ movements, and the spectators’ affective responses. We computed dynamic synchrony among performers using cross recurrence analysis of data from wrist accelerometers, and implicit measures of arousal from spectators’ heart rates. Additionally, a subset of spectators provided continuous ratings of enjoyment and perceived synchrony using tablet computers. Granger causality analyses demonstrate predictive relationships between synchrony, enjoyment ratings and spectator arousal, if audiences form a collectively consistent positive or negative aesthetic evaluation. Controlling for the influence of overall movement acceleration and visual change, we show that dance communicates group coordination via coupled movement dynamics among a group of performers. Our findings are in line with an evolutionary function of dance–and perhaps all performing arts–in transmitting social signals between groups of people. Human movement is the common denominator of dance, music and theatre. Acknowledging the time-sensitive and immediate nature of the performer-spectator relationship, our study makes a significant step towards an aesthetics of joint actions in the performing arts.