Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Gordon, Nakia S.
Second Advisor
Guastello, Stephen J.
Third Advisor
Grych, John
Abstract
Interpersonal synchrony is the alignment of emotions, behaviors, and physiology and is associated with prosocial behaviors and subjective connectedness. Few studies have examined synchrony in friend dyads. The present study compared emotional and physiological synchrony during emotional and neutral interactions, explored how social role may influence empathy, and tested if friendship characteristics predicted synchrony. Participants were 56 friend dyads recruited from a predominantly White, Midwestern university. The study included two sessions. In the first session, participants completed prequestionnaires and each participant identified three emotionally salient situations that they had not shared with their friend. The second session was an interaction session where they each discussed their daily routine (neutral interaction) and one of the emotional situations that they identified in the previous session (emotional interaction). A total of four stories were shared during the interaction session. Electrodermal activity was collected throughout the conversations and participants reported their state affect following each conversation. Synccalc, an algorithm used to quantify synchrony, was used in the current study to obtain synchrony coefficients and determine the degree of influence within the dyad (Peressini & Guastello, 2016). Contrary to hypotheses, we did not find emotional and physiological synchrony in the neutral or emotional interaction. Still, participants reported similar positive and negative affect and subjective arousal states during the conversations. Further, listeners reported feeling more state empathy during the emotional conversations. Limitations including linear modeling, the experimental paradigm, and timing parameters for emotion and physiological states are discussed.