Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Quintard, Virginie
• Jouffre, Stéphane
• Paladino, Maria-Paola
• Bouquet, Cédric A.

Titel

Getting closer: Synchronous interpersonal multisensory stimulation increases closeness and attraction toward an opposite-sex other in female participants

Ist Teil von

• Consciousness and cognition, 2020-01, Vol.77, p.102849-102849, Article 102849

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Self-other bodily merging affects higher social cognitive and affective processes.•The enfacement illusion is extended to an opposite-sex other.•Synchronous interpersonal multisensory stimulation promotes closeness and attraction. Experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing synchronous stimulations delivered to another’s face induces enfacement, i.e. the subjective experience of ownership over the other's face. The synchronous Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation (IMS) procedure leading to enfacement induces changes beyond the bodily sense of self, such as increased feeling of closeness between self and other. However, evidence for such an influence of IMS on higher-level self-other representations remains limited. Moreover, research has been restricted to settings involving a same-sex other. The current study tested, in female participants, whether IMS could promote social closeness and attraction toward an opposite-sex other. Across two experiments, enfacement with an opposite-sex face was successfully obtained. Synchronous (vs. asynchronous) IMS yielded greater closeness with the other and induced greater Liking and Attraction scores. These novel findings add further evidence to the existence of a link between body representation and social cognition. Implications for interpersonal attraction are discussed.