Bøker av Reneeta Mogan Naidu

Researchers conjecture that rituals have been prevalent in human activities for millenniadue to tacit evolutionary functions of solidarity and cooperation. A key element ofritualistic behaviours is synchrony, defined as the matching of actions in time withothers. Synchrony has been associated with a range of phenomena, including increasedaffiliation, connectedness, and cooperation among group members. However, there havebeen a number of failed replications of key studies. Furthermore, synchrony researchhas focused mainly on social and affective responses. Synchrony's effects on cognitiveprocesses remain largely unexamined, even though synchronous actions require socialcognition. In this thesis, I investigate the link between synchrony and creative thinking,a basic and distinctively human cognitive process. This thesis reports four empiricalstudies conducted to investigate two main aims: (1) synthesise existing synchronyliterature to determine synchrony's overall effect on previously studied outcomes; and(2) investigate the relationship between synchrony and creative thinking. The focus oncreativity is theoretically relevant because both sociological speculations aboutsynchrony's role on cultural conformity and real-world observations on reduceddecision quality in highly cohesive groups (e.g., groupthink) suggest that synchronymay have detrimental effects on creativity. To address the first aim, a meta-analysis(Study 1) of experimentally manipulated synchrony studies showed that synchrony waspositively associated (small to medium effect sizes) with prosocial behaviour, socialbonding perceptions, partner cognition, and positive affect. Three experimental studieswere conducted to address the second aim. Study 2 investigated the direct associationbetween synchrony and two components of creative thinking - convergent thinking(i.e., synthesis of ideas toward a single creative solution) and divergent thinking (i.e.,generation of multiple alternative ideas) - and aimed to replicate shared intentionality(i.e., shared goal/purpose) on positive social and affective responses.