Shared music listening, emotional arousal and cognitive empathy enhance social presence in online interactions

Abstract Music can support social bonding, especially in face-to-face interactions, but its effects in online environments with reduced social cues are less understood. This study examined how shared music listening in an audio-only online setting affects social presence, affective responses, and subsequent cooperation. In a within-subjects design, 38 individuals were assigned to music-preference-matched dyads to complete cooperative tasks after listening to music in both a socially framed shared listening condition and a solo condition. Shared listening increased social presence compared with solo listening, and music-induced arousal was positively associated with social presence across conditions. Cognitive empathy moderated the effects of listening condition on both social presence and arousal, suggesting that individual differences in social-cognitive processing shape how shared listening in technology-mediated environments is experienced. However, shared music listening did not improve task performance and its effects on interaction quality were mixed. Group flow was adversely affected by shared listening, whereas dyad-level differences in music-induced arousal reduced emotional interdependence during cooperation, but only after shared listening. In addition, higher positive valence was associated with lower behavioral interdependence after shared listening but higher behavioral interdependence after solo listening. Together, these findings suggest that socially framed shared music listening can enhance the subjective social character of online interaction, while shaping interaction quality through affective alignment and perceived mutual adaptation rather than uniformly improving task-focused cooperation.