New Paper in Social Science and Medicine

Do doctors and patients exhibit similarity in their physiological responses during interactions with one another? Our new paper, now published in Social Science and Medicine, suggests that they do. In this research, we measured the autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses of oncologists and patients during their consultations with each other to examine "physiological linkage." We found that patients showed physiological linkage to their doctors—meaning that doctors’ physiological responses positively predicted patients’ responses at a subsequent time interval—when their relationships spanned three to eight consultations.

This work shows that, by "influencing" patients’ physiological responses on a moment-to-moment basis, doctors may have even more influence over patients’ physiology than previously known. Please see the full paper here for more details on this research!