Is this anythign like a group of women getting their period at the same time? Synced Heartbeats "New Avenue" for Bonding The discovery that people's hearts can harmonize solely on visual or auditory information reinforces a law of nature, according to Michael Richardson, a psychologist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. The natural law of coupled oscillators holds that when two or more rhythms meet, they will become coordinated—a phenomenon seen across the natural world, from fireflies matching their flashes to groups falling into step. "We like to think, as we move through our world, we're this isolated being," Richardson said. This study, as well as a decade of laboratory work, has "demonstrated this is not the case." Research has also shown this "social entrainment" helps keep our relationships healthy and may even reduce prejudice, he noted. Ritual expert Richard Sosis added, "This study is opening up an entirely new avenue of research that will help us understand how people bond. "Anthropologists have long appreciated that ritual binds people together, but it is unclear how this bonding is achieved," said Sosis, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut. "The primary assumption is that [group] activities such as communal dancing and singing and shared body movements would bind people together. "But what they're finding is you don't need that."
