Syncing online: A methodological investigation into movement synchrony, proxemics, and self-other blurring in virtual spaces

A growing body of literature has found that synchronising movements with a group subsequently increases self-other blurring and social closeness with synchronised partners. However, movement synchrony has not been studied in online settings. Our study has a primarily methodological focus to investigate whether synchronous movement leads to changes in self-other blurring and proxemics in an online, desktop-mediated environment. We conducted two experiments to manipulate synchrony with a group of virtual agents and investigate its impact on self-other blurring and comfort distance judgments. In Experiment 1, we compared synchronous movement to a no-movement condition; in Experiment 2, we introduced an unpredictable movement condition. In both experiments, we found that our manipulation of synchronous movement between participants and a virtual group of agents led to an increase in explicit self-other blurring compared to the no and unpredictable movement conditions; however, we did not find reliable effects on comfort distance judgments.