-
About
Our Story
back- Our Mission
- Our Leadership
- Accessibility
- Careers
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
- Learning Science
- Sustainability
Our Solutions
back
-
Community
Community
back
- Macmillan Community
- :
- Psychology Community
- :
- Psychology Blog
- :
- A Wonder of Walking (and Singing): Synchronized Sp...
A Wonder of Walking (and Singing): Synchronized Spirits
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
Imagine that you and a colleague (or spouse) have been at odds. You have argued and fought, each trying to persuade the other. Alas, there has been no meeting of the minds. What might you do next to create an opportunity for conflict resolution?
To “put behind” where you have been stuck, to “move on” from your standstill, to “get beyond” your impasse, one simple, practical strategy is literally to take steps forward—to go for a walk. In a new American Psychologist article, Christine Webb, Maya Rossignac-Milon, and E. Tory Higgins argue “that walking together can facilitate both the intra- and interpersonal pathways to conflict resolution.”
At the individual level, they report, walking supports creativity. It boosts mood. It embodies notions of forward progress.
At the interpersonal level, walking does more. Walkers’ synchronous movements, as they jointly attend to their environment and coordinate their steps, increases mutual rapport and empathy. It softens the boundary between self and other. And it engenders cooperation beyond the shared walking cadence.
If, indeed, synchronous walking increases rapport and prosociality, might there be a similar effect of synchronized singing? Does group singing help unify a diverse audience?
The question crossed my mind as folk singer Peter Yarrow (of “Peter, Paul and Mary”) rose near the beginning of a recent small group retreat of diverse people and invited us to join him in singing “Music Speaks Louder Than Words.” Yarrow, now age 79, has spent his career—from the civil rights and anti-war movements of the ´60s to today—in engaging audiences in synchronized singing of prosocial poetry.
Photo courtesy Byron Buck
What do you think? Does music speak louder than words alone? Do synchronized walking and group singing have overlapping psychological effects? Can both lift us beyond where words, in isolation, can take us?
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
-
Abnormal Psychology
19 -
Achievement
3 -
Affiliation
1 -
Behavior Genetics
2 -
Cognition
40 -
Consciousness
34 -
Current Events
27 -
Development Psychology
16 -
Developmental Psychology
34 -
Drugs
5 -
Emotion
48 -
Evolution
3 -
Evolutionary Psychology
5 -
Gender
19 -
Gender and Sexuality
5 -
Genetics
12 -
History and System of Psychology
5 -
History and Systems of Psychology
7 -
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
50 -
Intelligence
8 -
Learning
65 -
Memory
38 -
Motivation
14 -
Motivation: Hunger
1 -
Nature-Nurture
7 -
Neuroscience
42 -
Personality
27 -
Psychological Disorders and Their Treatment
19 -
Research Methods and Statistics
90 -
Sensation and Perception
43 -
Social Psychology
124 -
Stress and Health
55 -
Teaching and Learning Best Practices
52 -
Thinking and Language
16 -
Virtual Learning
26
- « Previous
- Next »