Dancers and soldiers have known for hundreds of years that moving in synchrony with others fuels empathy and social cohesion. It took the research of William Condon, however, to illuminate the importance of synchrony in effective and satisfying everyday interactions with other people. He called his discovery “entrainment.”
Through exhaustive study of films of face-to-face interactions, Condon discovered that small synchronous movements occur within and between the actions of each conversant.
According to the anthropologist Edward Hall, “When we talk to each other our central nervous systems mesh like two gears in a transmission.” For him, synchrony is “a hidden force that, like gravity, holds groups together.”