How characteristics of work songs facilitate tempo-keeping in social interactions

Abstract Across cultures, people have long sung while working together—yet potential functional benefits of singing work songs have rarely been investigated experimentally. Rhythmic joint actions such as rowing, hammering or clapping tend to accelerate over time, a phenomenon known as joint rushing, which can undermine coordinated joint performance. Here, we examine whether features typical of traditional work songs help prevent joint rushing. In three experiments, pairs of participants performed rhythmic tapping tasks under conditions that simulated key aspects of work songs: solo vocalizations and metric subdivisions. When one person vocalized a subdivided rhythm, joint rushing disappeared completely, timing variability was reduced and interpersonal coordination improved. These findings reveal how vocalizations can act as a real-time scaffold for joint performance, linking basic cognitive timing mechanisms to the evolution of collective human practices. Work songs, and perhaps other forms of shared vocalization, may thus represent culturally evolved tools that harness cognitive mechanisms to enhance coordination in collaborative tasks.