ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the strength of unintentional interpersonal coupling was measured and its dynamical basis was tested. Interpersonal coordination’s can be described on a continuum of task constraint. Although it has been proposed that interpersonal coordination across the task constraint continuum can be explained by dynamical processes of self-organization, past research has explicitly tested this hypothesis only in strongly constrained tasks in which intentional coordination is the explicit goal. These studies have demonstrated dynamical coordinative processes in interpersonal coordination that are identical to those found in within-person coordination. In the interactional synchrony found in many natural social interactions, the coordination goal is implicit and, consequently, the coordination is weakly constrained by the occurring task and is unintentional. Of interest is whether similar dynamical principles underlie unintentional coordination between individuals in situations where the task constraint is weak. However, the dynamical basis of this relative coordination can be tested by calculating the distribution of relative phase angles.
