Music Synchronizes the Bodies of Its Audience

Synchronization and the bodily coordination of people in social interaction is by now a regular finding in psychotherapy research and social psychology. Recently, we have expanded the scope of synchrony research to empirical aesthetics and music. Studying audience members of public classical concerts, we hypothesized that the shared musical stimuli synchronize the physiological dynamics of listeners and, if so, the individual degree of synchrony is linked to a listener’s aesthetic experiences, music appreciation, affect and personality traits. The same may be expected for synchronized movement. After data acquisition with over 900 participants, we can now report significant evidence of physiological synchrony (cardiac and respiratory measures, skin conductance response) as well as movement synchrony in classical audiences, and distinct patterns of association with self-rated subjective experience. We believe this shows how the experience of music is embodied in listeners??? synchronies. We conclude this empirical review with suggestions how the embodiment approach may be situated in the philosophy of mind.