Understanding the Relationship Between Empathic Accuracy and Physiological Synchrony: A Theoretical and Analytic Guide with Evidence From Three Contexts

How do people make accurate judgments about others' thoughts and feelings? Are physiological responses that are synchronous between two people related to accurate judgments of people's psychological states? Although the relationship between interpersonal accuracy and physiological synchrony has been of interest to psychological scientists for over half a century, the field currently lacks a strong theoretical understanding of how and when accuracy is related to physiological synchrony. This may be, in part, because there are no agreed-upon conceptual or analytic approaches to studying this relationship. To develop a comprehensive understanding of how these two dyadic processes are related to one another, the field needs guiding theoretical principles that can be used to inform studies which empirically test questions regarding the accuracy---synchrony relationship. Furthermore, the field needs analytic guidelines that address unique concerns in studying accuracy and synchrony and which can be used to test for relationships between accuracy and synchrony. The goals of this dissertation are 1) to provide a comprehensive conceptual and analytic framework for studying empathic accuracy and physiological synchrony and 2) to apply this guide to three dyadic interaction studies in which the relationship between accuracy and synchrony can be assessed.;In Part 1, I propose six guiding principles for understanding the relationship between empathic accuracy and dyadic physiological synchrony. These principles provide guidance for researchers by outlining a) contexts in which the accuracy---synchrony relationship can be studied and b) ways in which accuracy and synchrony may be associated with one another. In Part 2, I outline three analytic strategies that allow researchers to empirically examine whether accuracy and synchrony are related. In Part 3, I apply these guiding principles and analytic techniques to three dyadic interaction studies to examine how different approaches influence conclusions regarding the association between accuracy and synchrony. In all three studies, autonomic nervous system responses (ANS) of dyad members were continuously recorded, and participants provided judgments of their own emotions and their partners' emotions. All three study contexts are appropriate for examining questions regarding the accuracy---synchrony relationship: participants were motivated to attend to their partners, thereby providing an opportunity for accuracy to occur, and involved in tasks that generate ANS reactivity for social reasons, allowing for variations in physiological synchrony to appear. Participants in these studies also interacted with each other face-to-face, and, therefore, had access to rich behavioral cues from their partners which are important for achieving accuracy and/or synchrony. In Study 1, undergraduates negotiated during a role-playing exercise; in Study 2, pairs of undergraduates worked together to solve math problems; in Study 3, dyad members worked together to solve logic problems, where some participants were randomly assigned to receive an incentive for accurately judging their partners' performance.;Three primary findings emerged across the studies. First, in all three studies, empathic accuracy and time-lagged physiological influence were negatively related to one another. This finding is in contrast to models of person perception and emotion contagion which propose positive accuracy---synchrony relationships and to models which suggest that the processes play a causal role in contributing to one another. I discuss potential explanations for these relationships in the unique context of each study. Second, across three studies and two analytic strategies, physiological synchrony conceptualized as within-time-point covariation was rarely associated with empathic accuracy, suggesting that adjusting for intrapersonal stability in physiological responding plays a critical role in whether relationships between accuracy and synchrony are found. Third, the relationship between accuracy and synchrony is affected by how much people assume they are similar to their partners, suggesting that the extent to which people project their emotional experiences on to others has a unique influence on the accuracy---synchrony relationship.;Results from these studies are the first to show that empathic accuracy and physiological synchrony can be negatively related to one another. In doing so, they suggest that different observable cues or different processes of detecting observable cues underlie accuracy and synchrony. They are the first, to my knowledge, to provide empirical evidence that conflicts with models suggesting that both processes have positive influences on one another. These studies are also the first to examine the impact of different analytic techniques on the relationship between accuracy and synchrony, highlighting the importance of making informed analytic choices when studying this relationship. Ultimately, a focal aim of this work is to promote future research by providing and demonstrating the use of a comprehensive conceptual and analytic framework for studying the relationship between empathic accuracy and physiological synchrony.