Can media synchronize our physiological responses? Skin conductance synchrony as a function of message valence, arousal, and emotional change rate

ABSTRACT

Guided by nonlinear dynamical systems theory, this study examined the degree to which media can synchronize individuals’ emotional arousal responses (as indicated by skin conductance) during video viewing as a function of message valence, arousal, and emotional change rate. Data from 490 paired dyads created from 45 participants were analyzed. We used cross recurrence analysis (a nonlinear dynamical analysis) to capture the dynamics of physiological synchrony. Results showed that calm compared to arousing messages and negative arousing compared to positive arousing messages generated stronger, more deterministically structured, and more stable skin conductance synchrony. Fast compared to slow changes in emotion generated stronger but not necessarily more deterministic and stable skin conductance synchrony. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Physiological synchrony
• media viewing
• cross recurrence analysis
• dynamic systems
• skin conductance

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship. The authors thank Minkyo Lee for selecting and pre-testing the stimuli, Seung Woo Chae, George Christian Roberson, Yang (Slash) Shi, and Yaojun (Harry) Yan for their help on data collection.

Notes

1 The cleaning procedures of ECG and facial EMG electrodes were omitted from this manuscript because the results of those two signals were not included here. See Han (2020) for more detailed cleaning and electrode placement procedures.

2 %REC is the rate of recurrence dots found in the plot over the possible dots (i.e., the area of the plot): $\text{\%}\mathrm{R}\mathrm{E}\mathrm{C}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{N^2}\sum _{a,b=1}^N{R}_{a,b}}$ where N is the side length of the plot. Letter a and b represent the time point on the Person A and Person B side, respectively. %DET is the percentage of recurrence dots that consist of diagonal lines (length > 1): $\text{\%}\mathrm{D}\mathrm{E}\mathrm{T}={\displaystyle \frac{{\sum }_{l=l_{min}}^{N}l\ast P\left(l\right)}{{\sum }_{a,b=1}^N{R}_{a,b}}}$ where $l$ represents length of a diagonal line and $P\left(l\right)$ is the frequency of the length-$l$ diagonal line. MaxLine is the longest diagonal line on the plot, representing the longest period of dyadic synchrony.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship.