Giving tips about `How to Get in Sync With Someone` to readers of the New York Times Magazine

December 3, 2020

Giving tips about `How to Get in Sync With Someone` to readers of the New York Times!

In the paper ``Imagine All The Synchrony: The effects of actual and imagined synchronous walking on attitudes towards marginalised groups`` (published in PloS one, 14(5), e0216585, Atherton, G., Sebanz, N., & Cross, L. (2019)), Sebanz, Natalie, a Professor of cognitive science at Central European University in Austria says:  “Don’t talk” . “The verbal stuff gets in the way.” Sebanz and two colleagues conducted an experiment in Hungary, where the country’s largest minority, the Roma, have long suffered discrimination. The researchers recruited non-Roma subjects and, after evaluating their bias against the Roma, had them walk silently around a large lecture hall alongside a Roma person; they did this for three minutes either in sync, matching footfalls or without any coordination. The subjects who synced their strides with a Roma reported less prejudice and stereotyping toward both their walking partner and the Roma as a group. “You tend to like people more and become more prosocial if you engage in synchronous behavior with them,” Sebanz says.

The article available here:

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