Social Entrainment

The social entrainment model was introduced by Joseph McGrath and Janice Kelly to provide a general framework for understanding some aspects of social behavior over time. The term entrainment is borrowed from the biological sciences, in which an internal rhythmic process is “captured” and modified by another cycle. For instance, we know that there are a number of cyclic processes within the body, such as body temperature, urinary output, and various hormonal cycles, that have become entrained to one another so that they operate in synchrony with respect to their regularly spaced recurrence.

These cycles can also be affected by various outside forces that might affect their onset, offset, or synchronization. For instance, the daynight cycle acts as a powerful entraining signal for synchronizing many of ...