Fire-walkers in Spain sparked an idea for a business experiment. As the men walked barefoot over hot coals, researchers noticed that the walkers’ heart rates fluctuated at the same time as those of their onlooking spouses and family members. “But the heart rates of unrelated people didn’t sync up this way,” says Michael Platt, professor of marketing, psychology, and neuroscience and director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. This got him and his colleagues thinking: Could these findings translate into a business setting? An article published in Penn Today and Knowledge at Wharton highlights their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which offers insights into assessing and improving team dynamics.
The Experiment
Volunteers formed groups to act as hiring committees and select the best candidate from a pool of job applicants. But in keeping with the “hidden profile paradigm,” the candidates’ information was unevenly distributed among the volunteers. This setup ensured that successful decision-making depended on effective communication within the group.
The Method
Researchers used heart-rate monitors to collect data during the group discussions, focusing on heart-rate synchrony as a measure of group cohesion and engagement. The data was analyzed using multi-dimensional recurrence quantification analysis, a sophisticated method that captures the dynamic interactions of multiple individuals over time.
The Outcome
Heart-rate synchrony predicted the probability that groups would reach the correct consensus with more than 70 percent cross-validation accuracy. “Remarkably, when heart rates were more in alignment across any committee, they were more likely to reach the correct consensus and make the best decision,” Platt says. “I’m taken aback by this finding because it’s so simple. Our hearts beat in time with each other when we have the conditions that are met for using all the information that’s available in a group.”
The Takeaway
Continuous brain and heart readouts could someday help us understand the behaviors that promote group bonding, Platt says, which can be harnessed to improve team performance in everything from business to education.
Published as “Does Group Performance Improve When Hearts Synchronize?” in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Wharton Magazine.
