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You can consciously smile more, maintain eye contact, laugh at someone's jokes, or adjust your posture on a date.
Your moment-to-moment skin conductance and subtle cardiac responses are much harder to intentionally manipulate.
In blind-date research, it was synchronization in these relatively covert physiological signals that predicted attraction.
The researchers described these responses as unconscious and difficult to regulate.
That offers an interesting explanation for why chemistry can sometimes be difficult to fake.
You can control many things about how you present yourself—but not every conversation happening between two nervous systems.
© Nature Human Behaviour