When audiences attend a classical concert together, their heartbeats, breathing rates and even sweat levels are synchronized, a new study shows. On October 5, the results were published in Scientific Reports. Wolfgang Tschacher of the University of Bern in Switzerland and colleagues monitored 132 people who were divided into three groups and attended different concerts by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brett Dean and Johannes Brahms while wearing body sensors.
During the concert, various measurements become more synchronized, such as participants' heart rates, breathing rates and skin conductivity. Skin conductivity is a measure of how much a person sweats based on the different electrical properties of the skin.
Before the concert, the researchers asked participants to complete a personality test. They found that this synchrony was more likely to occur among people who described themselves as having an agreeable or open personality.
“Openness is a personality trait that welcomes new experiences—like art, travel, and exotic locales.” Tschacher says agreeable people are more likely to “meet social expectations,” such as paying attention in the audience at a concert.
Tschacher anticipates that this synchronization will also apply to non-classical music genres, and may become even more synchronized outside of experimental settings. Due to COVID-19 restrictions during the experiment, the audience maintained social distance. At a typical concert, where the audience interacts frequently, this synchronicity might be even more pronounced, he said.
However, the timing of the participants' breaths - the time they took to inhale and exhale - was not synchronized.
Otherwise, you might think that synchronized heart rates would somehow lead to synchronized breathing patterns, says Daniel Richardson of University College London, UK. Instead, perhaps a person's heart rate is affected by how much they enjoy the music. "This is an interesting idea that needs to be explored further."