
Romantic chemistry may involve changes happening below conscious awareness.
In a real-life blind-date experiment, researchers measured participants’ heart rate and skin conductance while they interacted.
Attraction was associated with physiological synchrony between the two people.
Their heart rates and skin conductance tended to rise and fall together when attraction was stronger.
Surprisingly, obvious behaviors such as smiling, laughing, eye contact, and copying those behaviors didn’t predict attraction in the same way.
Sometimes two people may be “in sync” in a much more literal sense than they realize.
© Nature Human Behaviour