A new study has demonstrated how listening to live classical music concerts synchronises audience's heart rates, breathing and skin conductance.
Published in the journal Scientific Reports in October, the study found links between physical reactions and aesthetic experiences, such as when audiences were emotionally moved by the music they were listening to.
Researchers, led by Dr Wolfgang Tschacher, a psychologist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, monitored 132 participants across three public classical concerts using overhead cameras and wearable sensors.
Each concert featured the same string quintets: Beethoven's Op. 104 in C minor, Brahms' Op. 111 in G major, and Epitaphs by Australian composer Brett Dean.
Participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 85 years old, filled in questionnaires about their personalities before the concert. They were also surveyed after the concert as to whether they enjoyed the performance and how certain passages of music made them feel.
Researchers found statistically significant synchronisation on several measures, such as how audience's hearts would beat faster or slower during the same musical passages.
The synchrony also extend to the levels of skin conductance, a function closely related to the body's flight or fight response. High skin conductance indicates a state of arousal — basically it feels like goosebumps — while low skin conductance is linked to the feeling of relaxation.
Alignment of body movements were also captured by the cameras, which the authors noted as significant as the audiences of all concerts were seated in dimmed lighting and spread out due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in Germany, where the research took place.
Interestingly, although people's breathing became aligned, they did not actually inhale and exhale in unison.
The power of live classical concerts
"This research demonstrates the synchronisations previously reported by researchers in Germany amongst performers now extends to audience members too," says Greta Bradman, a registered Psychologist and ABC Classic presenter.
"Whilst the previous research was looking at choral singers who are breathing in unison, which could mediate the relationship between heartbeat synchrony and singing together, this new research does not involve audience members breathing together."
"The current research builds on that of Dr Devlin and colleagues from University College London and Lancaster University who monitored the heart rates and electro dermal activity of 12 audience members at a live performance of the West End musical Dreamgirls back around 2017, " says Bradman.
She observes the new study had a much larger sample size and examined other factors such as personality traits.
The study found people whose personality types indicated "openness to new experiences" and "agreeableness", such as trusting, sociable, imaginative persons who were interested in art were more prone to become synchronised.
However, more nervous, insecure people and also those who are outgoing and extroverted became less synchronised by the music.
Bradman says these findings shows that "rather than music just impacting us physiologically, in isolation of one another during a concert, the level of prosocial interaction happening during live concert going — as opposed to listening to recordings for instance — is far more [significant] than we once thought."
Future research on classical music concerts
Australian composer Brett Dean, whose music Epitaph was included in all three concerts says: "One is often aware of a shared spirit with particularly concentrated audiences, that a certain buzz goes beyond those of us on stage and seems to fill the room."
Dean, a lifelong performer and composer adds: "That it goes so far as this empirical evidence, showing an increased synchronisation of heartbeat, breathing and even sweating in the audience is truly delightful to know."
Dr Tschacher, the lead author of the research project told Agence France-Presse (AFP): "When we talk about very abstract things such as aesthetic experiences, how you respond to art and to music, the body is always involved there."
This hypothesis is recognised in psychology as "embodied cognition".
For Bradman, it is yet more evidence of the incredible positive impact that live music and the arts have on us humans.
She says: "These findings could go towards explaining other research, for instance around the benefits of attending live performance on mental health and wellbeing, or the finding from longitudinal research that engaging with live arts activities at least once or twice a year lowers the risk of dying across at least the next 14 years."
