Forms and Functions of Affective Synchrony

The reproduction of another individual’s emotions in the self—the embodiment of perceived emotions—has been demonstrated to constitute one mechanism for emotional information processing. That is, seeing someone’s emotional expressions and using one’s own face to make the same expression helps the perceiver represent the emotion of the other. When members of a dyad mimic each other’s emotional expressions and by consequence converge in their underlying physiology over time, we say that the dyad has reached a state of affective synchrony. The present chapter brings together recent theorizing and research on physiological and expressive affective synchrony. We propose that affective synchrony serves three interrelated functions: it enables efficient information exchange, allows for interpersonal emotion regulation, and builds social bonds. We review evidence for the contexts in which affective synchrony arises, propose, and evaluate the benefits and costs of achieving these states, and end by suggesting paths for future research in this area.