Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Interpersonal coordination is essential for successfulcooperative action. Beyond synchronized joint action toachieve a goal such as moving furniture, humans tend tospontaneously coordinate movement in everyday action (i.e.,coordinated limb movement during walking). Furthermore,these actions are said to arise from the interaction dominantdynamics between agents and foment cooperative behavior. Assuch, existing research demonstrates that closer affiliation isassociated with entrainment of physiological signals includingheart beat and rhythmic limb movement. Considering the rolesocial stigmatization plays in disrupting social interaction, thepresent research investigated the impact of concealable stigmadisclosure (depression diagnosis or bisexual identity)—as aperturbation to a nonlinear dynamical system—oninterpersonal coordination and affiliation. Study 1 resultsdemonstrate that depression disclosure may lead to more socialdistancing in a collision avoidance walking task compared tobisexual and neutral disclosures. In study 2, interactionimproved affiliation regardless of disclosure type.