Does synchrony improve ToM? An experimental study during Covid-19 lockdown

Behavioral synchrony, the act of keeping together in time with others (Baimel, Severson, Baron, & Birch, 2015), is constantly present in our everyday life, over the world and throughout time, suggesting that human beings might benefit from it. One of the most important ability of people is Theory of Mind (ToM): the capacity to think about others in terms of mental states. This study aimed to investigate whether the act of synchronize with someone during an on-line interaction fostered ToM during the social isolation due to the Covid-19. In order to reach this goal, a group of 138 participants, has been divided in three experimental conditions and tested in pairs using zoom.us. In the synchrony-condition, participants had to clap and open their hands following the same metronome; in the asynchrony-condition, participants had to clap and open their hands following two different metronomes and, in the control-condition, participants were engaged in a small talk. We tested their Theory of Mind using the Triangle Task (Castelli, Happé, Frith, & Frith, 2000) and the Mental State Attribution questionnaire (Baimel, Birch, & Norenzayan 2018; Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007) immediately after the synchronization. The results revealed that participants in the synchrony-condition showed higher scores in the Intentionality score of the Triangle Task (Castelli et al. 2000), which reflects people’s general tendency to use mental state terms. We did not find significant differences between conditions in Appropriateness, the ability to correctly describe the presented scene, and in the Mental State Attribution questionnaire, which assesses the tendency to attribute mental states to a determinate person. We explained these findings considering that synchrony fosters people’s propensity to consider others as mind-owners with mental states, even during the period of the quarantine for the Covid-19, in which high levels of loneliness and isolation were perceived.