Work songs, musical pieces designed to be performed or sung while working, have been widely documented across various cultures and in different historical periods. For instance, people in different nations have been known to sometimes sing together while rowing, sailing, harvesting crops or building structures.
Researchers at Central European University in Austria recently carried out a study aimed at exploring the effects of work songs on team coordination. Their paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, offers evidence that traditional work songs can stabilize the collective timing of a team, preventing individual members from unintentionally speeding up.
“The project grew out of our previous work on a phenomenon we call joint rushing: when people perform rhythmic actions together, they often unintentionally speed up,” Thomas Wolf, first author of the paper, told Phys.org.
“This can happen even when they try to keep a steady tempo, and even among trained musicians. Around the same time, sea shanties became very popular online through #shantytok, which made me curious about work songs more generally.
“When I read Ted Gioia’s book Work Songs, I noticed that one recurring function of work songs was described as ‘keeping the pace.’ Further reading led me to the Scottish tradition of oyster dredging, where songs were reportedly used to help rowers maintain the right tempo for a successful harvest.”
The effects of work songs on group coordination
Drawing inspiration from previous literature, the researchers set out to explore the possibility that work songs help to prevent single team members from unintentionally speeding up while completing tasks that require coordination. Wolf and his colleagues, Natalie Sebanz and Günther Knoblich, wanted to test this hypothesis under controlled laboratory conditions.
“We focused on two common characteristics of work songs that we thought might support tempo-keeping: solo vocalization and metric subdivision,” explained Wolf.
“Many work songs are sung either by a lead singer or in call-and-response patterns, meaning that at least part of the vocalization is produced by only one person. Work songs also often contain musical events between the instrumental actions. For example, if the instrumental action is a hammer stroke or a pull on a rope, the song may add notes or syllables in between these actions.”
Past studies related to rhythmic behavior showed that musical subdivisions can reduce the variability in the timing of specific actions performed by team members. Interestingly, timing variability is known to drive the phenomenon of joint rushing.
To investigate the effects of work songs on timing variability during collective tasks, Wolf, Sebanz and Knoblich carried out a laboratory experiment that involved pairs of adult participants.
Participants in each pair were asked to tap along with a metronome, a device used by musicians that makes a sound at specified regular intervals. Notably, their task was to continue tapping at the same tempo once the metronome was turned off.
“The crucial condition was what we nicknamed the ‘work song condition,'” said Wolf. “In this condition, one person repeatedly counted ‘one, two, one, two,’ so that each tap coincided with ‘one,’ while ‘two’ fell exactly between the taps. This allowed us to test whether a very simple vocal pattern, containing key features of work songs, could help the pair maintain a stable tempo.”
Implications for teamwork, sports and rehabilitation
In their earlier studies, the researchers found that joint rushing is often very difficult to control. In fact, they observed that even expert and extensively trained musicians tend to speed up when they are performing rhythmic actions alongside others.
“What was striking in this study was that, just by having one person count in a specific way, joint rushing was not only reduced, but statistically speaking, it was completely eliminated,” said Wolf.
“That was a powerful result, because it showed that vocalizations can have a very direct effect on how people coordinate their actions in real time. For me, the broader implication of this is that vocalizations are not only a way of communicating information. They can also be tools for real-time coordination in groups.”
The recent work by Wolf, Sebanz and Knoblich suggests that a key function of work songs is to improve coordination between team members, preventing specific individuals from inadvertently speeding up their actions.
In their next studies, the researchers would like to extend their investigation to other types of group vocalizations, including lifting calls, chants, counting patterns and other vocal signals.
The results of their research could eventually inform the development of new techniques or practices designed to improve coordination in specific settings. For instance, it could inspire sports trainers or emergency response teams to start using work songs to prevent joint rushing among team members.
“In future work, we want to understand the mechanisms behind these effects, specifically: ‘how exactly do vocalizations help people coordinate?'” added Wolf.
“Ultimately, we hope that a better understanding of these mechanisms will not only explain traditional practices such as work songs, but also help us design new kinds of vocalizations for modern coordination problems; for example in sports, rehabilitation, occupational safety, or high-stakes teamwork.”
Written for you by our author Ingrid Fadelli, edited by Sadie Harley, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive.
If this reporting matters to you, please consider a donation (especially monthly). You’ll get an ad-free account as a thank-you.
Publication details
Thomas Wolf et al, How characteristics of work songs facilitate tempo-keeping in social interactions, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.2944.
The content is provided for information purposes only.