The Shared Attention Effect

What it is

Knowing that other people are attending to the same thing at the same moment makes a person's own reaction stronger. In the 2014 study by Shteynberg and colleagues, positive images felt more positive and negative images more negative when attention was shared with others doing the same task.

In effect

The article on body doubling uses it as one account of why working in the same moment as another person can change how a task feels.

What it does not say

The main evidence comes from one research group, so the direction is plausible and the size is not settled. It concerns reactions to images and does not test working beside another person.

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