Shared music listening, emotional arousal and cognitive empathy enhance social presence in online interactions
5 affiliations
- 1Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, PO Box 21, Haartmaninkatu 3, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
- 2Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
- 3Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
- 4Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
- 5Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body, and Brain, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
Music can support social bonding, especially in face-to-face interactions, but its effects in online environments with reduced social cues are less understood. This study examined how shared music listening in an audio-only online setting affects social presence, affective responses, and subsequent cooperation. In a within-subjects design, 38 individuals were assigned to music-preference-matched dyads to complete cooperative tasks after listening to music in both a socially framed shared listening condition and a solo condition. Shared listening increased social presence compared with solo listening, and music-induced arousal was positively associated with social presence across conditions. Cognitive empathy moderated the effects of listening condition on both social presence and arousal, suggesting that individual differences in social-cognitive processing shape how shared listening in technology-mediated environments is experienced. However, shared music listening did not improve task performance and its effects on interaction quality were mixed. Group flow was adversely affected by shared listening, whereas dyad-level differences in music-induced arousal reduced emotional interdependence during cooperation, but only after shared listening. In addition, higher positive valence was associated with lower behavioral interdependence after shared listening but higher behavioral interdependence after solo listening. Together, these findings suggest that socially framed shared music listening can enhance the subjective social character of online interaction, while shaping interaction quality through affective alignment and perceived mutual adaptation rather than uniformly improving task-focused cooperation.
Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-026-01395-9.
Related
- Emotional arousal predicts pupil responses following a single attention shift between bright and dark moving stimuli
- Live-streaming interaction and young consumers’ identification with time-honored brands: The roles of emotional arousal and relationship strength
- Exploring neural correlates of emotional and social listening with high-density diffuse optical tomography in the auditory cortex
- Shared Neural Responses and Individualised Emotional Experience: An fMRI Study of Music Listening and Anhedonia
- Strong mnemonic prediction errors increase cognitive control, attention, and arousal.
BibTeX
@article{heikkinen2026shared,
title = {{Shared music listening, emotional arousal and cognitive empathy enhance social presence in online interactions}},
author = {Pyry Heikkinen and Vesa Putkinen and Mari Tervaniemi},
journal = {Cognitive Processing},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1007/s10339-026-01395-9},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-026-01395-9},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Shared music listening, emotional arousal and cognitive empathy enhance social presence in online interactions
AU - Pyry Heikkinen
AU - Vesa Putkinen
AU - Mari Tervaniemi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
JO - Cognitive Processing
DO - 10.1007/s10339-026-01395-9
UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-026-01395-9
AB - Music can support social bonding, especially in face-to-face interactions, but its effects in online environments with reduced social cues are less understood. This study examined how shared music listening in an audio-only online setting affects social presence, affective responses, and subsequent cooperation. In a within-subjects design, 38 individuals were assigned to music-preference-matched dyads to complete cooperative tasks after listening to music in both a socially framed shared listening condition and a solo condition. Shared listening increased social presence compared with solo listening, and music-induced arousal was positively associated with social presence across conditions. Cognitive empathy moderated the effects of listening condition on both social presence and arousal, suggesting that individual differences in social-cognitive processing shape how shared listening in technology-mediated environments is experienced. However, shared music listening did not improve task performance and its effects on interaction quality were mixed. Group flow was adversely affected by shared listening, whereas dyad-level differences in music-induced arousal reduced emotional interdependence during cooperation, but only after shared listening. In addition, higher positive valence was associated with lower behavioral interdependence after shared listening but higher behavioral interdependence after solo listening. Together, these findings suggest that socially framed shared music listening can enhance the subjective social character of online interaction, while shaping interaction quality through affective alignment and perceived mutual adaptation rather than uniformly improving task-focused cooperation. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-026-01395-9.
SN - 1612-4782
SN - 1612-4790
ER -