Researchers have discovered a significant link between musical synchronization and social connectedness. Analyzing the behavior of university students engaged in impromptu music-making, the study found that individuals who synchronized their musical rhythms felt a stronger sense of connection with their peers, highlighting music’s unique role in fostering social cohesion. The findings have been published in Psychology of Music.
Previous studies have indicated that music can establish and maintain social bonds, but the mechanics of how this happens were still shrouded in mystery. This study aimed to uncover the link between the physical act of making music together – specifically, synchronizing rhythms – and the feeling of being connected to others.
“I am interested in how being ‘in sync’ with other people through the experience of music-making and other forms of artistic expression supports a general feeling of connectedness to others, which in turn may support people’s well-being,” said study author Warren Mansell, a professor of mental health at Curtin University and director of the LEx Mental Health Research Group.
“There is good evidence that synchrony is involved in a range of everyday activities, yet the research in this area had either set a tempo for people to play to, or allowed people to communicate when performing which means they could have told each other to play in sync rather than the synchrony emerging purely through the interface of music.”
“I wanted to find out whether people spontaneously synchronise without any external rhythm or social communication, and whether this is linked to a sense of connectedness with the other people performing in the room.”
The study was conducted with 49 university students, aged 18 to 25, who participated in a music-making task. To measure the sense of connectedness, the researchers employed the Sense of Connectedness Instrument, a 20-item scale assessing social connectedness, and a single-item connectedness scale for real-time assessment during the music session. Happiness levels were also measured before and after the session to gauge any emotional changes.
Participants, grouped into trios or duos, were given MIDI piano keyboards modified to produce percussion sounds, minimizing the influence of musical skill differences. During a 10-minute session, they were instructed to play their instruments and rate their feelings of connectedness every minute, without communicating or looking at each other.
The researchers found a significant positive correlation between the time participants synchronized their playing and their sense of connectedness. In simpler terms, the better the students were at playing in time with each other, the closer they felt to their fellow group members. This finding held true even when considering how well the participants knew each other before the study, suggesting that the act of making music together was a key factor in enhancing social bonding.
“People who spontaneously play in time with each other feel a greater sense of connectedness with one another,” Mansell told PsyPost. “There seems to be a basic need to experience being ‘in sync’ with other people because it emerged naturally within a few minutes within over half of the groups of two or three people we recruited.”
“Drumming together in small groups, like in this study, is one way to achieve a sense of connectedness. It is likely that finding ways to get ‘in sync’ with people through art, music, sport, conversation, and other hobbies and activities may be a key ingredient of good well-being.”
Interestingly, the study did not find a significant change in overall happiness levels before and after the music-making session. This suggests that while group music-making might enhance feelings of social connectedness, it doesn’t necessarily impact general mood or happiness in the short term.
An innovative aspect of this study was how synchronization was assessed. In addition to an expert’s subjective analysis of the recorded music sessions, a new machine learning method was developed to objectively measure the degree of synchronization.
“It was very hard to find a measure of the amount of synchrony between different people’s rhythms,” Mansell said. “None of the published algorithms (e.g. entropy; total time between different player’s notes) we found were actually a measure of synchrony of rhythms, and so we used subjective judgments by a musician. We also trialled a generative machine learning method – based on quantizing in electronic music production – that worked in some cases and that we plan to refine.”
Quantization in music refers to the process of aligning musical notes to a predefined grid, typically based on a specific time interval or rhythmic pattern. This is a concept frequently used in digital music production.
“This study has led us to understand that the synchrony of music or rhythm is not only about the quantization of music such as beats or notes to a grid or specific time divisions,” explained co-author Tauseef Gulrez. “This is a concept which is commonly used in digital music production to ensure that musical elements are precisely synchronized.”
“We tried many available rhythm quantization libraries but none worked. In our case, our quantization of music (MIDI files) involved unsupervised machine learning mechanisms while snapping the onset to a machine learned cluster of timing, which is basically based on a specific musical subdivision, such as quarter, sixth or eighth notes. This process helps to create a more structured and precise rhythm and capture synchrony. (The full code is available at https://github.com/PCT-Models/Music_synchrony).”
Like any piece of research, this study is not without its limitations. While a musically trained expert listened to and evaluated the synchronicity of the music, this method still leaves room for subjective interpretation. The synchronicity measure using machine learning, while objective, is still in its early stages and requires further development and validation.
“We need to identify a more reliable measure of synchrony, and this may help us to model the ‘perceived collective rhythm’ that emerges in musical improvisation, but also in other group activities,” Mansell said. “We also want to find out how each person’s biological rhythms (e.g. breathing, heart rate, brain waves) may, or may not, be involved in this synchrony.”
“There is definitely a need to incorporate skeletal hand movements (gestures) using computer vision and physiological signals heart beat to better realize the synchrony and musical rhythms,” Gulrez added.
The study paves the way for further exploration into how music can be effectively used in therapeutic settings, especially in music therapy.
“We hope to go deeper in future research to try to understand the rhythms that govern the integration of sensory information within consciousness, and how finding activities with other people who are ‘in sync’ with oneself may be one of a number of ‘catalysts’ that support recovery from mental health problems,” Mansell added.
The study, “What is the relationship between spontaneous interpersonal synchronization and feeling of connectedness? A study of small groups of students using MIDI percussion instruments“, was authored by Deimantė Kavaliauskaitė, Tauseef Gulrez, and Warren Mansell.
