learned is that when people move together as one orchestrated unit, they later report that they experienced an embodied sense of rapport with each other—they say they felt alive, connected, with a mutual sense of warmth and trust as they conversed. Other studies concur. When synchrony is surreptitiously produced in experimental studies—by having people walk, tap, sing, sway, or rock together in time—it breeds liking, cooperation, and compassion, as well as success in joint action. By now, you’ll recognize these various effects as pointing to positivity resonance, your body’s definition of love. From the research you read about in chapter 3 , you can also bet that the synchrony between your chatting neighbors runs deeper than what you can see with your own eyes. Odds are that their synchronized gestures both reflect and trigger synchrony in their brain and oxytocin activity as well.
Next I turn to the ripples that love spreads out over time. As you experience positivity resonance more often, day in and day out, it affects all that you become.
Becoming
Becoming Us. Consider your closest relationships—with your best friend, your spouse, your parent, or your child—the people with whom you feel so interwoven that you freely use words like
we
and
us
ineveryday conversation. Yet those words didn’t always fit. Even your closest relationships had a starting point prior to which
us
didn’t apply. Odds are, positivity resonance was part of the origin story for each important relationship that you have today. Think back to those origins for a moment. Was the emotion you first shared together playful amusement or raucous joy? Was it mutual fascination or awe? Or was it instead a peaceful moment of serenity or shared relief? Maybe it was some other flavor on the positivity menu. Although it might be easier to call up the day you first met or “clicked” with your best friend or spouse, the generation-spanning bonds you share with a parent or child were also forged through accumulated micro-moments of felt security and affection, communicated variously through synchronized gaze, touch, and vocalizations. One after the other, micro-moments of positivity resonance like these formed the pathways toward the relationships that you now take for granted as the most solid sources of comfort, support, and companionship in your life.
The study that Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk conducted with me, described above, tells us that as relationships are first budding, two people begin to share not only their emotions but also their motions. Spontaneously and nonconsciously, they begin to gesture in synchrony, as a unified duo. Indeed, these nonverbal signs of unity forecast a shared subjective appreciation of oneness, connection, and an embodied sense of rapport. The more that positivity resonance orchestrates shared movements between people, the data show, the more likely a relationship is to take root. Following this logic further, some choices for first dates are better than others. Dancing or canoeing (assuming you each take up an oar) could be better bets for bonding than simply catching a movie or sharing a meal. The same would go for galvanizing a work team. Whether it’s through initial icebreaker activities, a nature retreat, or ritualized ways of sharing good news and appreciations, the platforms you create for shared motions and positive emotions are what allow a team to gel.
The glue that positivity resonance offers isn’t just for connecting once-strangers at the start of new relationships. It also further cements long-standing ties, making them even more secure and satisfying. Art and Elaine, a married couple living in Long Island, New York, learned this fact in a surprising way. They saw a poster in town recruiting couples to join a study on the “factors that affect relationships.” Motivated more by curiosity than the promised thirty dollars, they called to sign up. They got more curious when the person on the phone
Next I turn to the ripples that love spreads out over time. As you experience positivity resonance more often, day in and day out, it affects all that you become.
Becoming
Becoming Us. Consider your closest relationships—with your best friend, your spouse, your parent, or your child—the people with whom you feel so interwoven that you freely use words like
we
and
us
ineveryday conversation. Yet those words didn’t always fit. Even your closest relationships had a starting point prior to which
us
didn’t apply. Odds are, positivity resonance was part of the origin story for each important relationship that you have today. Think back to those origins for a moment. Was the emotion you first shared together playful amusement or raucous joy? Was it mutual fascination or awe? Or was it instead a peaceful moment of serenity or shared relief? Maybe it was some other flavor on the positivity menu. Although it might be easier to call up the day you first met or “clicked” with your best friend or spouse, the generation-spanning bonds you share with a parent or child were also forged through accumulated micro-moments of felt security and affection, communicated variously through synchronized gaze, touch, and vocalizations. One after the other, micro-moments of positivity resonance like these formed the pathways toward the relationships that you now take for granted as the most solid sources of comfort, support, and companionship in your life.
The study that Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk conducted with me, described above, tells us that as relationships are first budding, two people begin to share not only their emotions but also their motions. Spontaneously and nonconsciously, they begin to gesture in synchrony, as a unified duo. Indeed, these nonverbal signs of unity forecast a shared subjective appreciation of oneness, connection, and an embodied sense of rapport. The more that positivity resonance orchestrates shared movements between people, the data show, the more likely a relationship is to take root. Following this logic further, some choices for first dates are better than others. Dancing or canoeing (assuming you each take up an oar) could be better bets for bonding than simply catching a movie or sharing a meal. The same would go for galvanizing a work team. Whether it’s through initial icebreaker activities, a nature retreat, or ritualized ways of sharing good news and appreciations, the platforms you create for shared motions and positive emotions are what allow a team to gel.
The glue that positivity resonance offers isn’t just for connecting once-strangers at the start of new relationships. It also further cements long-standing ties, making them even more secure and satisfying. Art and Elaine, a married couple living in Long Island, New York, learned this fact in a surprising way. They saw a poster in town recruiting couples to join a study on the “factors that affect relationships.” Motivated more by curiosity than the promised thirty dollars, they called to sign up. They got more curious when the person on the phone
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