day to coordinate your actions as closely as possible with another person.
These simple methods work to stimulate mirror neurons and synchronize heart and breathing rates:
• Take a walk around the block together, and match your stride as closely as possible, in both rhythm and length.
• Listen to a song together—everyone taps their fingers or claps their hands to the beat.
• Learn a simple dance routine, and perform it together.
• Rock in rocking chairs, or swing in swings, next to each other, at the same pace, for at least ninety seconds.
• Work together to lift and carry a heavy piece of furniture.15
Walking, tapping, clapping, dancing, rocking, and swinging together all work in the same way—they create biological linkage through near-perfect physical mirroring and synchronization. Carrying a piece of heavy furniture together, however, is more like playing a video game: in order to avoid dropping it, bumping it, or hurting yourself, you have to successfully anticipate your partner’s thoughts and movements. This kind of intense neurological linkage stimulates the same increase in connection, affection, and empathy as physical mirroring.
There are countless ways to get a good sync in, and it only takes a few minutes. Be creative and invent your own favorite traditions.
Examples: Here are some ideas from SuperBetter players:
• “My son and I walk in sync for one minute every day when I pick him up from school. He decides how fast or far to step, and I have to try to match him!”
• “My wife and I have been taking turns picking a song to listen to each night before we go to bed. We don’t try to move together on purpose, because that feels forced and kind of awkward. But we somehow wind up tapping our feet or swaying together by the end of the song, without even consciously trying.”
• “Whenever there’s a big disagreement at the office, we have the people who are disagreeing move the conference room table into the hallway and back again. I’m sure the syncing helps, but it also breaks the tension and brings some humor to the situation. Everyone knows what it means when they see the table coming into the hall!”
Tip: Your partner doesn’t need to know all the science for it to work. But if you’re going to make it a habit, clue them in so they can share in this powerful knowledge with you.
Also, it helps if your go-to syncing activity is something you both enjoy doing for its own sake. Don’t force it. Let the synchronizing happen naturally, while you’re focusing on the fun or the challenge.
Being able to strengthen bonds with people you already know is a powerful ability. Starting to see the entire world around you as full of potential allies is another superpower altogether.
Sometimes, to get more support in our lives, we have to be willing to look in the most unlikely places. And games can help us do that—by opening up our minds to friendship with people we would ordinarily overlook. One of my favorite game studies in recent years explains how.
Social scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have been studying the real-life impacts of video games for more than a decade—and recently they made a major breakthrough. They discovered that playing the Nintendo game Wii Bowling with a stranger not only makes you like that person more—something you’d expect from almost any enjoyable activity two people perform together—but also makes you like more everyone else in the world who you perceive to be like your game partner. Let me explain.
One of the biggest social problems in Singapore today is alienation between young people and senior citizens. According to national surveys, they don’t like each other very much, and they avoid spending time together. The result is that seniors in Singapore are often socially isolated, which is terrible for their mental and physical health. Meanwhile, young people miss out on significant opportunities to be mentored and cared for by seniors.
Could games help solve this widespread social problem? The NTU researchers set up a pilot study to find out. They paired up college students and senior citizens for weekly video game dates lasting thirty minutes each. After six weeks of playing Nintendo Wii Bowling together, the seniors and the young people not only considered each other friends, they had dramatically revised their opinion of the entire other group.
The young people decided they liked senior citizens, in general, a whole lot more. Meanwhile the seniors were much less anxious about interacting with young people. Both groups said they were more likely to seek out social interaction with someone from the other group in the future. This represented a huge psychological shift. They didn’t just make one new friend; they started to see all seniors or young people as potential friends.
Crucially, this powerful change did not occur in the study’s control group, in which young people and seniors spent the same exact amount of time together making conversation, watching TV, or working on arts and crafts together. The individuals liked each other more after six weeks of hanging out, but they continued to dislike other seniors or young people in general. In short, they changed their mind about just one person, not the whole group. They remained, unfortunately, psychologically closed off from a whole world of potential allies.
By now, you can probably guess how the Wii Bowling video game accomplished what other common social interactions could not: deep synchronization was surely at play. And one particular outcome of synchronization—increased empathy—makes all the difference when it comes to reversing prejudice or healing social tension.
Empathy is the ability to imagine and relate to what someone else is feeling—and fortunately, a little bit of empathy goes a long way. Research shows that increasing our empathy for just one person in a group will improve our opinions about the entire group in general.16 However, if we simply like one person in a group without increasing our empathy for them, our opinions about the group as a whole will remain the same.
This is exactly what happens when we play a game with someone we think we won’t like, by virtue of their age or any other prejudicial factor. By increasing our empathy for our fellow player, we increase our empathy for everyone who reminds us of that player.
To feel more empathy with others, people have to have positive social interactions in safe environments. Synchronization can’t happen if you’re preoccupied with negative thoughts or feelings. In fact, research shows that strong prejudice and dislike for someone else’s group can actually prevent us from experiencing neurological linkage.17 But games have an advantage here as well. The NTU researchers theorize that the equalizing nature of games makes it easier to connect in spite of existing social tension, anxiety, or mistrust.
When we play a game, we come together on equal terms and equal footing. We agree and trust each other to follow the same rules, to pursue the same goal, and to treat each other fairly. We accept each other as worthy teammates or competitors, regardless of our outside social status.
The equal status and trust that we experience in games, as temporary and as limited as they may be, makes it feel safer to explore social interactions with people we might ordinarily be anxious around or avoid altogether. And it’s not just the NTU researchers who have figured this out. Groups around the world are starting to harness the power of play to make allies across cultural borders and boundaries. The Middle East Gaming Challenge, for example,
