Three PhD candidates in Movement Science/Social Psychology, Psychophysiology, and (Social) Neuroscience at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

This project is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) project, The Rhythm of Relating: How Emotional Sharing Emerges from Interpersonal Synchrony in Movements, Physiology, and Neural Activations. When people engage in emotional sharing, they often display the same rhythms in movements, heart rate, and brain activity. The project will investigate how such synchronous rhythms contribute to interpersonal emotion, using complex statistical analyses (i.e., analysing EEG data, time-frequency analysis, autoregressive modelling). The project entails both experimental research and research in psychotherapy settings. The results may help to make psychotherapy more effective and improve communication, for instance, in close relationships or during negotiations

The project is organised into three sub-projects, each to be carried out by one PhD student. The three PhD students will work together during data collection. At the same time, each PhD student will be responsible for their own sub-project.

The first PhD student will focus on movement synchrony. This PhD student will be supervised by Sander Koole (VU Amsterdam), Peter Beek (VU), John Stins (VU), Tom Wilderjans (VU/Leiden University/Leuven University), and Wolfgang Tschacher (University of Bern).
The second PhD student will focus on physiological synchrony, particularly cardiovascular responses. This PhD student will be supervised by Sander Koole (VU Amsterdam), Tom Wilderjans (VU/Leiden University/Leuven University), Wolfgang Tschacher (University of Bern), and Emily Butler (University of Arizona).
The third PhD student will focus on brain-to-brain synchrony, using EEG hyperscanning. This PhD student will be supervised by Sander Koole (VU Amsterdam), Suzanne Dikker (New York University/VU), and Tom Wilderjans (VU/Leiden University/Leuven University).

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Three PhD candidates in Movement Science/Social Psychology, Psychophysiology, and (Social) Neuroscience at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam