We are exceptionally social beings. It's probably what is, if not probably, it is definitely what has produced our great survival advantage, what has made as the dominant species on the planet, which is as a species we can connect, interact, and develop emotional synchrony with great alacrity and speed.

While I talk to you right now and I present a whole bunch of ideas or if we met in person and we talked and I was presenting or talking to you in words,

behind the scenes unconsciously we would both you and I would be essentially checking each

other out our movements, our gestures, our tone of voice, the right hemisphere unconsciously

would be looking at each other to see if we're safe to connect with if we feel safe with each other.

This ability to establish emotional synchrony means that we can connect not only by seeing which emotional state were in, but we attuned to each other, which means we

lock each other in, we attend to each other, and then we begin to unconsciously mimic each other's movements,

each other's actions, gestures, which puts us into a synchronous state where we can interact smoothly.

For example, if you're in a room with somebody who yawns, you will feel the urge to yawn.

If you're in the room with somebody who anxiously taps their feet, you'll feel the impulse to start tapping your feet.

If you're in the room with somebody who suddenly is very

tired, you'll feel that impulse to relax. Human beings are set to mimic each other.

And the great psychologist Bandura

noted that this is one of the primary ways that we learn by it's called unconscious implicit

mimicry. We unconsciously note the movements and the actions and the behaviors of each other and we start

acting them out. So this happens all the time. We're constantly doing this. We're constantly seeing each other's physical states of being how activated we are, whether we're

jumpy, whether we're relaxed, whether we're fidgety, whether we're not, and we begin to copy it.

And this is, of course, a great benefit.

Without this ability to emotionally move towards other people,

we wouldn't be able to emotionally regulate ourselves.

When people are put in solitary confinement in prisons and are not given access

to other people, we spin out, we spiral out because the human brain is set up to literally gravitate emotionally to the people that we are around.

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