How do two tango dancers achieve millisecond-level coordination without a conductor? Guenther Knoblich decomposes joint action into five mechanisms, from unconscious entrainment to motor simulation, revealing that even speeding up is a sophisticated coordination strategy.

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Knoblich defines joint action broadly as any coordination between people in space and time, deliberately avoiding distinctions between intentional and unintentional, cooperative and competitive. This breadth allows him to identify shared mechanisms across seemingly different situations: table tennis opponents and dance partners may rely on the same low-level coordination processes despite having opposing goals. He identifies five mechanisms ranging from simple to cognitively demanding: entrainment ...