More Than Close Friends: Higher Emotional Coordination in Romantic Relationships

COEX 

Emotions are fundamental to social interaction and deeply intertwined with interpersonal dynamics (Nummenmaa et al., 2012), especially in romantic relationships, which are characterized by their deep emotional bonds (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Previous hyperscanning studies often entail interactive processes that are intricately intertwined with emotions (Barrett et al., 2007; Parkinson & Simons, 2009), posing a challenge to disentangle whether the observed neural synchronization reflects the emotions during the interaction or is intrinsic to the interaction itself. Moreover, studies have shown a strong association between relationship quality and emotional coordination (Larson & Almeida, 1999; Randall et al., 2013), thus warranting additional research in the romantic context.