Pleasantness makes a good time: musical consonance shapes interpersonal synchronization in dyadic joint action

Music making is a process by which humans across cultures come together to create patterns of sounds that are aesthetically pleasing. What remains unclear is how this aesthetic outcome affects the sensorimotor interaction between participants.

Here we approach this question using an interpersonal sensorimotor synchronization paradigm to test whether the quality of a jointly created chord (consonant vs. dissonant) affects movement coordination. We recruited non-musician participants in dyads to perform a dyadic synchronization-continuation task (dSCT): on each trial, participants first synchronized their movements to a metronome (synchronization phase) and then continued tapping together at the same tempo without the metronome (continuation phase). Each tap yielded a note and participants heard both their own and that of their partner, thus creating a chord that was varied to be either consonant (Perf5 or Maj6) or dissonant (Min2 or Maj2). For each trial, participants also rated the pleasure they felt in creating the sounds together. Additionally, they completed questionnaires about social closeness to the other participant, musical reward sensitivity and musical training.

Results showed that participants' taps were closer in time when they jointly created consonant (high pleasure) vs. dissonant (low pleasure) chords, and that pleasure experienced by the dyad in each trial predicted interpersonal synchronization. However, consonance did not affect individual synchronization with the metronome or individual tapping when the metronome was discontinued. The effect of consonance on synchronization was greater in dyads who reported feeling less close prior to the task.

Together, these results highlight the role of consonance in shaping the temporal coordination of our actions with others. More broadly, this work shows that the aesthetic outcome of what we create together affects joint behaviors.