Moving with a partner to the musical beat may make people more cooperative — even babies as young as 14 months.
Researchers worked with 48 toddlers, each held by an assistant and gently bounced for about two minutes to the rhythm of the Beatles’ version of “Twist and Shout.” They faced an experimenter who bounced in the same rhythm or off the beat.
Then the scientists tested whether the babies would help out when an experimenter “accidentally” dropped an object, or tried to pick up an object just out of hand’s reach. The study was published online in Developmental Science.
After controlling for other behaviors, such as smiling or approaching the experimenter, they found that babies who were bounced in a synchronous rhythm were slightly but significantly more likely to help than those who were bounced off beat. Although the effect was moderate, the authors say, it was still impressive given the quite short duration of the interaction.
“We tend to think that music is a frill that doesn’t matter,” said the lead author, Laurel J. Trainor, a professor of psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “But in fact, these social binds that we form early in development affect everything that happens later, including our ability to learn and how we view others and ourselves.”