A new study from the University of Bern, Switzerland, seems to confirm what many music lovers feel they know from experience: that with the right stimuli, the many can become as one.
According to research led by psychologist Dr Wolfgang Tschacher, audience members’ heartbeats, rates of breathing and even sweating synchronise when they watch a classical music concert.
Photo © Luis Quintero/Pexels
Tschacher and his colleagues monitored 132 people (18–85 years of age) who were separated into three groups to watch different string quintet performances of the same pieces of music – Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 104 in C minor, Australian composer Brett Dean’s Epitaphs and Johannes Brahms’s Op. 111 in G major – while wearing body sensors.
During the concerts, data showed that participants’ heart rates, breathing speeds and skin conductance became synchronised.
Prior to the concerts (which all took place in Berlin), the researchers asked the participants to undergo a personality test. Once that data was interpolated, the researchers found that synchronisation was more likely to occur among people who considered themselves to be ‘agreeable’ or ‘open’.
“Openness is a personality trait of welcoming new experiences – liking art, travel and exotic things,” said Tschacher in an article published in New Scientist. People who are agreeable may be more likely to “fulfil social expectations”, such as concentrating on a concert while in the audience, he explained.
“It is fascinating that people at a concert, who do not know each other and do not even speak to each other, seem to have a shared experience, based on measurements like their heart rate,” said Tschacher.
“When we see synchrony, we know people are really engaged in the music, as they are reacting to it emotionally in the same way.”
Past studies have also highlighted that not only audience members but musicians and conductors too can exhibit synchronised physical reactions during performances.
Fans of Beethoven may be interested to hear that the composer’s String Quintet in C minor generated less of a coordinated response compared to Brahms and to Dean’s Epitaphs.
