Sue:
<snip>
It is a wonderful metaphor (maybe not just a metaphor?) for the
way people tune into one another's rhythms.
<snip>
Yes. The problem you hint at is real. Social entrainment isn't just a
metaphor. But even if everyone in Modern Office Ltd wakes spontaneously at
about 7.00 is it helpful to use the term? Clearly endogenous biological
processes have indeed been modified from outside. But that isn't because of
oscillators particularly. At least not in any obvious or direct way. It may
be because the CEO of Modern Office Ltd tends to sack people who don't show
up on time.
This doesn't doesn't explode social entrainment. But without a supporting
description of the vectors, including endocrinology, it may end up being
vapid.
<snip>
Do you see Zeno's self-consciousness as being an exaggerated affect of the
negative feedback loop introduced when one tries self-consciously to
control automatized actions? (I read a pop psych account once of how the
choker - in sport - is a person who tries too hard and therefore sabotages
automatically learnt expertise. That's the kind of thing I am thinking
about.)
<snip>
Yes. The sporting example seems a good one: having self discipline but not
realising when what's needed is actually _less_ control.
On the other hand, some effects do seem quite spontaneous. When a crowd
claps along with a piece of music, for example, too often it's a sort of
generic beating that's both out of time and inappropriate to the pace of
what's being played. Even the point of greatest amplitude (which is where
most of the audience presumably think the beat ought to be) tends to be
somewhat adrift. The reasons, I suspect, are several. When people first
start to clap the time, they introduce some phase lag by _reacting_ to the
beat. They tend to entrain to one another rather than to the more
expressive (but less forceful) rhythmic contours of the music. And finally
there are constraints upon what *most people* can clap in comfort. But of
course I'm merely guessing.
An analogous (and simpler) example might be those strange sing-song voices
some people tend to use when leaving answerphone messages or when reading
something aloud. Here the speaker seems to self entrain in line with an
inner schema or template rather than with the text of what s/he says. And
again there may well be cultural and other constraints upon speed, pitch,
rhythm etc, which are common across speakers.
CW
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'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
(Franz Kline's mother)
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