The synchrony-prosociality link cannot be explained away as expectancy effect: response to Atwood et al. (2022)

Tunçgenç, B ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1135-1004, Bamford, JS, Fawcett, C and Cohen, E, 2023. The synchrony-prosociality link cannot be explained away as expectancy effect: response to Atwood et al. (2022). Open Mind, 7, pp. 711-714. ISSN 2470-2986

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Abstract

Moving in time to others, as is often observed in dance, music, sports and much of children’s play cross-culturally, is thought to make people feel and act more prosocially towards each other. In a recent paper, Atwood et al. (2022) argued that the inferential validity of this link found between synchronous behaviour and prosociality might be mainly due to “expectancy effects generated by a combination of (1) experimenter expectancy, leading to experimenter bias; and (2) participant expectancy (i.e., placebo effects)”. Here, we counter these arguments with (1) examples of studies devoid of experimenter expectancy effects that nevertheless demonstrate a positive link between synchrony and prosociality, and (2) insights from the developmental literature that address participant expectancy by showing how expectations formed through lived experiences of synchronous interactions do not necessarily threaten inferential validity. In conclusion, there is already sufficient good-quality evidence showing the positive effects of synchronous behaviours on prosociality beyond what can be explained by experimenter or participant expectation effects.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Open Mind
Creators:	Tunçgenç, B., Bamford, J.S., Fawcett, C. and Cohen, E.
Publisher:	MIT Press
Date:	2023
Volume:	7
ISSN:	2470-2986
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1162/opmi_a_00103 DOI 2336083 Other
Rights:	© 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	09 Jan 2025 11:00
Last Modified:	09 Jan 2025 11:00
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52825

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