Relationship Closeness and Joint Action Coordination

Researchers define joint action coordination as “two or more actors [coordinating] their actions under real time constraints with or without the explicit intention to do so” (van der Wel, Knoblich, & Sebanz, 2011, p. 1420). While previous research has investigated how the valence (i.e., the attractiveness or aversiveness) of interpersonal relationships affects interpersonal coordination dynamics (Hommel, Colzato, & van den Wildenberg, 2009), the present experiment examines the effects of relationship closeness on joint action coordination. First, dyads collaboratively completed a stimulus-control task on a computer. This task is used to assess general cooperative performance (Schloesser, Bai, Abney, & Jordan, 2015). Each dyad member then individually completed a reaction time task that is used to assess whether they developed associations between the keypress movements they made while controlling the stimulus and the effects produced by these keypress movements (i.e., the intentionally-generated stimulus movements and unintentionally generated auditory effects). Dyads then took part in one of two conditions (i.e., shared-disclosure or private-disclosure) in a self-disclosure task, followed by another three minutes of stimulus control and another reaction time task. While the closeness manipulation appeared to be successful, the data obtained from the performance and reaction time task do not allow one to draw any firm conclusions regarding the effects of relationship closeness on joint action coordination