A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction [pdf]
pnas.org
pnas.org
In sum, we have shown that subjective understanding during social interaction can modulate interpersonal attraction. Interestingly, the findings of the current study suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying individual adjustments of interpersonal attraction during social encounters might act through internal reward signals that are partly independent of external feedback, which makes them perhaps less prone to cheating by potential cooperation partners. To investigate the interaction between intrinsic confidence signals and other — honest or manipulative — signals sent back and forth between communication partners and to examine the neural determinants of the dynamics of human social relations in larger groups (“social connectomes”) remain challenging tasks for future studies. The current study suggests that mutual understanding is an important factor in interpersonal attraction, and that further research into the role of a common neural vocabulary in interpersonal attraction will lead to a better understanding of the neurobiological factors that define human social relations.
Here's my attempt, please revise:
1. Our own attraction of our partners is modulated by our internal reward machinery.
2. This reward machinery doesn't depend on external signals very much. That means it's hard for our partners to manipulate.
3. Future work: Investigating how our intrinsic confidence signals are shaped by our partner's messages
4. More future work: Investigating these effects in larger groups
5. Takeaway: Mutual understanding is an important factor in interpersonal interaction
6. Takeaway: We should research a vocabulary to describe neural states; this will help researchers express interpersonal factors more precisely
> Significance.
> Humans interacting with other humans must be able to understand their interaction partner’s affect and motivations, often without words. We examined whether people are attracted to others whose affective behavior they can easily understand. For this, we asked participants to watch different persons experiencing different emotions. We found the better a participant thought they could understand another person’s emotion the more they felt attracted toward that person. Importantly, these individual changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the participant’s reward circuit, which in turn signaled how well the participant’s “neural vocabulary” was suited to decode the other’s behavior. This research elucidates neurobiological processes that might play an important role in the formation and success of human social relations.
You have to have things in common to be a resting place, so that you have peace of mind while doing those things together.
You also have to have things that you're good at and that makes the other person proud (kind of envy) of you, things that they'll contemplate while you're doing.
And, finally, things that you suck at but they are good, so that you'll also stare while they are doing and will keep you enchanted.
You are most likely a lover of problems and puzzles. Relationships where you don't understand the other person, is the Ultimate Problem Puzzle, but in the emotional field zone, where you can experience and interact with the problem in so much more ways than just computer code.
The same dopamine high of breaking through in solving a problem in the messy legacy code base, refactoring down those 1000s of lines into 100s, increasing the webserver's performance etc.. those same circuits are firing when trying to 'fix' or 'solve' the indecipherable person you are dating.
however, sometimes after a beginner hacker starts, maybe 3,4,5 years, and after their philosophizing-abstractionist hacker phase, they become the 'wise hacker', where writing ---no code at all--- is the best code to try and solve, or bypass problems. Maybe this is what people feel when they meet a S.O. who share mutual intrinsic emotional understanding.
I don't personally subscribe to this philosophy but I could see some other pattern-based thinkers branching off it.
I can perfectly-well understand being content with the first kind of disconnect—that's the kind of puzzle that drives you to learn more about your partner.
The second kind seems a lot more fundamental, though: if someone had completely different preferences or feelings from me, to the point where I couldn't even understand those feelings/preferences, I'd just feel like they were an alien.
And I mean, maybe I'm imagining something too far out-there; I can perfectly well understand the feelings and preferences of e.g. autistics or sociopaths or narcissists. But, say—someone who enjoys things, but then this enjoyment doesn't translate to doing those things ever again? Can't connect. Just don't get it. Bizarre alien mind architecture.
After reading this I wonder if it was actually that my ex-partners were incapable of understanding how someone unlike them would react to different situations. I was usually able to predict their reactions, but maybe it was only a one way street.
To be fair, I do see how you could misinterpret this as blaming the other person; but an alternate take is that the person is brainstorming, after reading the article, that the other person was simply less adept at predicting behavior.
It's human to use our register of past experiences to foresee problems in the future. I'd rather put out a warning than waste time with someone who later hits the eject button based on something that was evident from the jump. In relationships of any sort, really, including business, it's reasonable to say "hey, just so there aren't any misunderstandings down the road, let's be clear on x,y,and z; otherwise, we're wasting our time and this probably isn't going to work."
I don't know you or your context but, without that context, that reads like someone missing the boat completely about relationships. Sure, you might start out without anything in common, but part of the bonding processes is finding things you do have in common (typically by experimenting with each other's interests, or mutual exploration/discovery of new interests/experiences). If you don't nurture that, then over time you may grow apart and no longer have anything in common.
I can vouch that you do not have to have much in common with your significant other despite what all the dating services will lead you to believe.
My wife and I have failed every compatibility test (most of the tests are gimmicky anyway) and have very little in common yet we have been together for 17 years.
However we can still effectively communicate to one another.
One armchair conclusion I sort of take from the study is that this should give some greater credence to couples therapy and that sooner participation is probably better. After all communication can be learned.
That said and with a bit of tough love I really doubt they were incapable of understanding you. If they were, perhaps there's something you should change so they can understand you.
Offhand, your "I already know" remark comes off as putting up walls because you're afraid of being hurt. It's hard to learn about someone when they don't want you getting too close.
Can you identify what your common interests were in those relationships? What brought you together besides you both having equipment the other fancies? If there's a limited supply of answers, it's possible you really didn't have mutual interests or aspirations/life goals.
Long term they may have been doing you a favor.
"Having just met you I can already tell nothing about you interests or excites me. I have trust issues and I fully expect you to leave me so in preparation for that I'm going to put up emotional walls and not invest myself too much in this relationship in case it fails."
There's a wide and opaque area between not being someone's clone and having nothing in common.
The parent meant, I assume, that they expressed the first one: that they don't currently know much about the other person's interests, and vice-versa.
That doesn't mean they won't learn about them. And, in fact, if the two people are compatible on a personality level, they'll likely turn out to enjoy similar interests—finding out about "things I liked but didn't know it."
But it does communicate something important: that if you're someone who isn't willing to learn about new things, and stretch your definition of "who you are" to encompass new things—i.e. to "invest yourself in the relationship"—then this won't work.
And that is an important thing to communicate, at some point (maybe not the first conversation, but at some point.) Some people really do just want a partner who likes "what they like", instead of a partner that will help them grow in directions they will enjoy only in retrospect.
You trying to predict what your partner is going to do might not have been such a positive contribution to the relationship. People don't like it when someone tries to predict their reaction to something. If you're right then it makes the other person look predictable, and if you're wrong then you look like you don't know them very well. Either way it's bad.
What? How exactly do you expect to pleasantly surprise your significant other if you can't predict what they'll like? How could you possibly buy them gifts? I'm pretty sure that predicting what I like is something that pretty much everyone is perfectly ok with.
[1] https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/07/31/what-weve-been-getting-...
That's great, but you claimed that your partner wouldn't like it if you try to predict what they would like. The link you provided actually says the opposite: that people say they prefer gifts tailored to their preferences, which means they wouldn't mind you predicting what they'd like, contrary to your original claim.
I suspect if you broadened the scope even a little, the effect would reverse. How about beverages? Alice likes coffee and hates whiskey. Bob hates coffee but loves a single malt. What should Alice and Bob get each other for Christmas?
They probably don't like it if you set it up as a trap for them, but surely a lot of the "little things" in a long-term relationship are exactly this kind of prediction? Knowing their favourite X and least favourite Y?
Partner dances are rather old fashioned these days, but I think one of the reasons for their long popularity is precisely mutual prediction - it's a little test of whether you're able to sync up with someone and go in the same direction.
So I think that intro of yours is just a half-truth because you really don't know until you do.