Gender difference in implicit walking synchrony: female syncs better

Abstract

Implicit interpersonal bodily entrainment, as a subtle kind of body language, has been largely discussed recently. However, few research probe into this topic in regard of gender. Comparing to male, female ndividuals perform better at reading body language, such as recognizing facial emotion and detecting emotion from biological motion. This led us to ask: Are females more responsive to others’ body movement as well unconsciously as well? Here we estimate synchronous walking steps of female dyads and male dyads in an outdoor path similar to real life situation to increase ecological validity. We recorded all dyads’ steps by a motion sensor attached above ankle and conceal its real function to ensure the implicit nature of walking entrainment. Results showed that female dyads exhibited a significantly greater extent of walking synchrony than male after considering other known modulating factors such as autistic traits, height, weight, and age. It indicated that besides the superiority in processing nonverbal cues, women are also more motionally responsive to other’s body movement than men, specifically, tune self movement to synchronize with others’ movement in a synchronous fashion. Together with other studies suggesting that females in average have lower autistic traits and higher empathy, our findings imply that gender difference significantly molds social interaction style.