The great poet Rumi once wrote, “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” In these 2 lines, he perfectly expressed the almost indescribable feeling of connection that people in love experience.
This type of spiritual connection may exist outside of the realm of science. However, a recent series of experiments published in Communications Psychology revealed that some people have a unique talent for deeply connecting or “synchronizing” and people find them very attractive.
One of the big giveaways people are attracted to one another is when their minds and bodies magically sync up. People who share a connection on a first date often unconsciously mirror each other’s postures, mannerisms and facial expressions.
A great way to see if someone is attracted to you is to cross your legs and if the other person follows, there’s a good chance they may be interested. People attracted to one another may also experience synchrony in heart rates, respiration, hormone levels and other autonomic functions.
All in all, when 2 people are in the throes of synchronicity, they share feelings of intimacy and cooperation. It’s a very similar physiological phenomenon seen in parent-child interactions.
To find out if synchronicity was tied to romantic attraction, researchers had participants watch a video of a man and a woman on a date. Some of the couples were in-sync and others were out-of-sync. After watching the video, the people were asked to rate their attractiveness and how strongly they appeared to be attracted to one another.
Synchronized couples scored higher in both attractiveness and mutual attraction.
In a second experiment, scientists held a speed dating event with 24 men and 24 women. Each person wore a wristband to track their physiological arousal. They were also asked to tap to the beat of a metronome. Those who synced both musically and psychologically received higher attractiveness scores.
Those with the highest scores were known as “Super Synchronizers” by scientists.
“We discovered that the ability to synchronize is stable across tasks and across partners. Some people are Super Synchronizers and Super Synchronizers are consistently rated as more attractive,” Shir Atzil, study author and director of the Bonding Neuroscience Lab and an assistant professor at Hebrew University, said according to Psy Post. “Being sensitive to a partner and attuning to them can help promote romantic bonding. This is because synchronized physiological states can improve regulation across various bodily systems, making interactions more fulfilling and suggesting cognitive and evolutionary advantages.”
To take advantage of synchronicity on your next date, plan some activities that make it easier to connect with someone. Studies show that people’s heart rates and breathing align when they watch emotional films together. This can also happen when listening to music together or dancing. A simple shared task such as doing a puzzle together can also help you sync with your date.
Ultimately, it’s all about building a connection with another person. “When we become aware that ‘we’ are sharing a moment with someone else, it is no longer necessarily the case that we are fundamentally separated by our distinct heads — we could really be be two individuals sharing in one and the same unfolding experience,” Tom Froese, a cognitive scientist from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, told Discover Magazine.