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Gender differences in synchrony: Females in sync during unstructured dyadic conversation
Author(s) -
Fujiwara Ken,
Kimura Masanori,
Daibo Ikuo
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2587
Subject(s) - conversation , psychology , interpersonal communication , social psychology , prosocial behavior , social relation , developmental psychology , communication
Abstract Although previous studies have reported that individual prosocial traits generally enhance synchrony, gender as a social factor was not the subject of focus. The present study examined gender differences in synchrony by conducting three experiments on dyadic unstructured conversations with same‐gender strangers. Synchrony was assessed by calculating the cross‐wavelet coherence and determining the relative phase. As expected, through the three experiments, the female dyads showed a higher degree of synchrony, compared to the male dyads. Moreover, the conversation type (i.e., structured monologue vs. unstructured dialogue) did not moderate the gender effect (Experiment 2), while synchrony in the female dyads was influenced by the preceding conversation (Experiment 3). In contrast, through the three experiments, the role of the relative phase was unclear. The findings indicate that the social factor, gender, has an impact on synchrony, and that interpersonal sensitivity contributes to synchrony.