Interpersonal Synchrony and Dispositional Empathy: A Review of International Research

Abstract

Interpersonal synchrony is the process of alignment of participants in social interaction at the behavioral, physiological, or interbrain levels. This phenomenon is closely interrelated with the establishment of social contacts, the results of joint actions, the enhancement of relationships, and the development of social skills. Despite the popularity of studies of such attunement abroad, in Russian science, it is only beginning to appear. In the literature, a theoretical assumption has been made about the significance of the contribution of trait empathy to interpersonal synchrony. We understand trait empathy as the ability to experience the affective and cognitive states of another person while maintaining one’s own self. The present review is the first attempt to assess the extent to which foreign empirical studies of dyadic synchrony support the proposed hypothesis. The analysis of the literature allows us to note the heterogeneity of the studies in terms of the methods used to assess empathy and interpersonal synchrony, the experimental tasks used, and the interaction contexts studied. The results of the included works reflect contradictory results, which may be related to the mentioned heterogeneity of research designs. It has been shown that empathy can contribute to interpersonal synchrony, but this occurs primarily in dyads of previously familiar participants or in specific contexts that require the use of appropriate empathic skills. In some contexts, the level of empathy of only one of the dyad participants is more important. However, it should be noted that due to the small sample sizes and limited number of studies on the topic, conclusions about the validity of the hypothesis can only be preliminary. There is a need for more relevant studies with sample sizes reaching sufficient power, and unified experiment designs facilitate the possibility of comparing their results.

Keywords

• interpersonal synchrony
• nonverbal synchrony
• behavioral synchrony
• physiological linkage
• interbrain synchronization
• dyadic synchrony
• empathy