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Sharing happy stories increases interpersonal closeness mediated by enhancing interpersonal brain synchronization

View ORCID ProfileEnhui Xie, Qing Yin, Keshuang Li, View ORCID ProfileSamuel A. Nastase, Ruqian Zhang, Ning Wang, Xianchun Li
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.18.431771
Enhui Xie
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
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  • ORCID record for Enhui Xie
Qing Yin
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
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Keshuang Li
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
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Samuel A. Nastase
2Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, 08544
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Ruqian Zhang
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
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Ning Wang
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
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Xianchun Li
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
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  • For correspondence: xcli@psy.ecnu.edu.cn
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Abstract

Our lives revolve around sharing stories with others. Expressing emotion (i.e., happy and sad) is an essential characteristic of sharing stories and could enhance the similarity of story comprehension across speaker–listener pairs. The Emotions as Social Information Model (EASI) suggests that emotional communication may influence interpersonal closeness, but the effect of sharing emotional (happy/sad) stories on interpersonal closeness remains poorly understood. Here, one speaker watched emotional videos and communicated the content of the videos to thirty-two listeners (happy/sad/neutral group). Both speaker and listeners’ neural activities were recorded using EEG. After listening, we assessed the interpersonal closeness between the speaker and listeners. Compared to the sad group, sharing happy stories showed a better recall quality and a higher rating of interpersonal closeness.

Meanwhile, the happy group showed higher interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and temporal cortex (specifically TPJ) than the sad group. Moreover, such IBS mediated the relationship between the quality of sharing stories and interpersonal closeness, and happy emotion moderated this mediation model. The magnitude of IBS differentiated high interpersonal closeness from low interpersonal closeness. Exploratory analysis using support vector regression showed that the IBS could also predict the ratings of interpersonal closeness in left-out subjects. These results suggest that IBS could serve as an indicator of whether sharing emotional stories facilitate interpersonal closeness. These findings improve our understanding of sharing emotional information among individuals that guide behaviors during interpersonal interactions.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted February 18, 2021.
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Sharing happy stories increases interpersonal closeness mediated by enhancing interpersonal brain synchronization
Enhui Xie, Qing Yin, Keshuang Li, Samuel A. Nastase, Ruqian Zhang, Ning Wang, Xianchun Li
bioRxiv 2021.02.18.431771; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.18.431771
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Sharing happy stories increases interpersonal closeness mediated by enhancing interpersonal brain synchronization
Enhui Xie, Qing Yin, Keshuang Li, Samuel A. Nastase, Ruqian Zhang, Ning Wang, Xianchun Li
bioRxiv 2021.02.18.431771; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.18.431771

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