Figure 1

Experimental setup. (a) The panel describes the first setup (Experiment 1: pendula), where each player was asked to move a pendulum with their own preferred hand and try to synchronize its movement with the others (see “Methods” for more details). (b) The second setup (Experiment 2: Chronos), where participants had to oscillate and synchronize the index finger of their preferred hand over a Leap Motion controller (Leap Motion, Inc.³⁴) while being virtually connected with the others through the platform Chronos³³. The main difference with the previous setup is the absence of visual and acoustic coupling among the players due to physical separators and headphones, so as to cancel or minimize social interactions. (c–f) We plotted the four configurations (topologies) implemented in the experiments: complete graph (c), path graph (d), ring graph (e), and star graph (f), with N being the number of players involved in the experiments. In the complete graph, each participant can see all the others; in the path graph, every player can see the trajectories of two neighbours with the exception of the two external participants (the head and tail of the chain) that are constrained to visualize the motion of only one neighbour; in the ring graph, each player can see the motion of only two neighbours; in the star graph, all the players observe the motion of one central player who, conversely, sees the motion of all the others.