4 ms·

Does the effect fall off with the square of the distance? Is it linear? Is there a threshold? Does adding a third person (or more people) affect it? How is

Does the effect fall off with the square of the distance? Is it linear? Is there a threshold? Does adding a third person (or more people) affect it? How is it different from, say, sitting in a cafe with another person? Do you have to know each other? If there is a difference what criteria determine that difference? Can one "pretend" that one is "body double"-ing with a unknowing stranger? Or does each person have to know they're doing it? If you really want to investigate this IMO you're going to have to look at everything from near-field EM to Ramana Maharshi (who often taught in silence), you should study Cybernetics (by which I basically mean read "Introduction to Cybernetics" by Ashby), you should take high-speed video of people doing this and then analyze it for e.g. unconscious synchronization, etc...

sfink 4y ago
> Does the effect fall off with the square of the distance? Is it linear? Is there a threshold? You seem to want to treat it as some sort of physical field or force. IANAP (I am not a psychologist), but it seems fairly self-evident that the effect arises from the awareness of being observed, which leads to you observing and mediating your own actions. Based on that, I would predict that physical distance is only indirectly relevant. The strength of the effect is going to depend on how many of your activities are theoretically knowable by the other person. If they are physically present but farther away, you can "get away with" doing more things without them knowing, so you'll omit such behaviors from the self-monitoring loop. If they are virtually present, I would imagine that the strength of the effect depends on how clearly you can observe them (because we can't see how they see us, but we'll assume that it's roughly the same). Which would make for an interesting experiment: do body doubling with very asymmetric visual quality, size, and latency but without informing the participants that they are seeing anything different. My guess is that the one who sees a better quality signal will experience a much stronger effect. Like many things in psychology, though, there are tons of confounding variables. Your relationship to the person matters—specifically, how much you care about their opinion of you and your actions. I would imagine body doubling with a dog would work temporarily and then the effect would fade away as you got comfortable with goofing off in front of them. Anybody you double with, you'll place on a scale from somewhere between "dog" and "attractive person I am desperate to impress". (And the latter end of the scale can be paralyzing, so this isn't a small→large effect scale.)
- carapace 4y ago
  > You seem to want to treat it as some sort of physical field or force. Of course (I'm a rational materialist) it's "some sort of physical field or force", there's nothing else it could be, eh? How much of the effect is due to power (in the physical sense) and how much due to modulation (communication)? (Not to be coy, I'm a rational materialist but I'm also a Reiki Level III Master and I would really really like someone somewhere to do science to that. If I can influence these folks to take a more scientific materialist tack on their investigation they might discover something relevant to my own curiosities.)

sfink 4y ago

> Does the effect fall off with the square of the distance? Is it linear? Is there a threshold? You seem to want to treat it as some sort of physical field or force. IANAP (I am not a psychologist), but it seems fairly self-evident that the effect arises from the awareness of being observed, which leads to you observing and mediating your own actions. Based on that, I would predict that physical distance is only indirectly relevant. The strength of the effect is going to depend on how many of your activities are theoretically knowable by the other person. If they are physically present but farther away, you can "get away with" doing more things without them knowing, so you'll omit such behaviors from the self-monitoring loop. If they are virtually present, I would imagine that the strength of the effect depends on how clearly you can observe them (because we can't see how they see us, but we'll assume that it's roughly the same). Which would make for an interesting experiment: do body doubling with very asymmetric visual quality, size, and latency but without informing the participants that they are seeing anything different. My guess is that the one who sees a better quality signal will experience a much stronger effect. Like many things in psychology, though, there are tons of confounding variables. Your relationship to the person matters—specifically, how much you care about their opinion of you and your actions. I would imagine body doubling with a dog would work temporarily and then the effect would fade away as you got comfortable with goofing off in front of them. Anybody you double with, you'll place on a scale from somewhere between "dog" and "attractive person I am desperate to impress". (And the latter end of the scale can be paralyzing, so this isn't a small→large effect scale.)

carapace 4y ago
> You seem to want to treat it as some sort of physical field or force. Of course (I'm a rational materialist) it's "some sort of physical field or force", there's nothing else it could be, eh? How much of the effect is due to power (in the physical sense) and how much due to modulation (communication)? (Not to be coy, I'm a rational materialist but I'm also a Reiki Level III Master and I would really really like someone somewhere to do science to that. If I can influence these folks to take a more scientific materialist tack on their investigation they might discover something relevant to my own curiosities.)