SuperBetter: How a gameful life can make you stronger, happier, braver and more resilient. Jane McGonigal
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Some people may advise you to purposefully mimic your boss’s or your date’s body language to help gently nudge the love along, but I don’t recommend it. Instead, it’s much more fun (and definitely less creepy!) to simply become aware of mirroring when it happens—and to delight in these micro-moments of love whenever you notice them.
So here’s your quest to learn how to use your new love detector: for the next twenty-four hours, pay special attention to the body language of people around you (and to your own body language).
Quest complete: If you see body language being mirrored, congratulations—you’ve completed this quest by detecting a micromoment of love!
If synchronization happens all the time, what makes the syncing that takes place during game play so special?
In some regards, there’s nothing special about it—it works exactly as synchronization works during any kind of social interaction. Because you and your fellow player are focusing your attention on the same activity at the same time, your neurons start to mirror each other. And because emotions are contagious, you will pass your emotions back and forth—whether it’s pride in a successful move, or frustration over a difficult obstacle, or surprise at an unexpected outcome. As your feelings align, so do your bodies—from the muscles in your face that express different feelings to the amount of sweat on your skin that reveals how excited or stressed out you are.
All shared activities—such as watching a movie, having a conversation, or listening to music—have a similar potential to create mind-and-body links. However, the intensity of game-based linkage is typically much stronger.
Remember from Chapter 1 the special kind of attention we give to games: when we play, we go into a state of deep focus, or flow. And when two people are in flow together, the synchronization is far greater (and far more enjoyable) than when they participate in less mentally absorbing activities.10 Likewise, because we tend to feel heightened emotions like excitement and joy during game play, the quality of emotional linkage is heightened as well. The stronger our synchronized feelings, the deeper our mind-and-body connection.
But what’s really special about syncing during game play is best explained by what psychologists call theory of mind, which is short for having an accurate theory of what’s going on in someone else’s mind. When you’re playing a game with someone else, you spend a tremendous amount of time trying to anticipate what they’re going to do next. This is true whether you’re playing cooperatively or competitively: the more you can accurately model what your coplayer is thinking, the more successful you’ll be in the game.
Game play requires a powerful theory of mind, much more so than ordinary social interactions.11 Compared with taking a walk together or having a conversation, game play—with all its unpredictability and constant decision making—demands much tighter and more sustained synchronization. It’s due to this high-demand social environment that neurological and physiological links happen so quickly and easily whenever we play. It’s simply the nature of the game.
Because synchronization happens so rapidly, reliably, and deeply during game play, many gamers find it particularly useful for creating stronger social bonds. This is especially true for introverted individuals, who seem to benefit greatly from the easy and powerful social connections afforded by games.
Real-world studies offer even more insight into the benefits of syncing up through game play. Research from Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life, for example, shows that playing video games together regularly in the same physical space increases the sense of connection between parent and child.12 And for children with autism, multiplayer video games have been shown to increase cooperation, improve family social interactions, and increase social intelligence.13 Children with autism communicate more directly and confidently with their peers and siblings after playing a game together. They also pay each other more compliments and engage more frequently in positive touching, such as giving each other high-fives.14
If you’re not a frequent gamer but have a gamer in your life, consider taking the time to play together more often. It may be one of the most productive things you could do with your free time—if you want to enjoy a closer, happier relationship.
A SuperBetter Story: The Secret Language Between Father and Daughter
Antonio, a senior sales executive with a Fortune 500 company, doesn’t seem like the kind of man with a lot of time to play video games. When I met him at his company’s annual offsite leadership meeting in Chicago, he was juggling important calls and emails the whole time and flagging down colleagues to touch base about upcoming sales meetings around the country.
Although I was invited to the offsite to speak about how game psychology could improve motivation and productivity in the workplace, Antonio, like most of the executives I met that day, seemed more interested in talking to me about the role that games played in his family.
“I set aside a few hours every week to play games with my daughter,” he told me. “It’s very important to me, especially now that she’s a teenager, that we keep playing together. It helps keep the lines of communication open.”
Antonio’s daughter Julia had just turned thirteen, and her new favorite game was Minecraft, the Lego-like building universe where players gather resources to architect whatever they can imagine. Monsters roam the Minecraft world, requiring players to build safe rooms and craft armor to protect themselves.
Apparently Minecraft was giving Julia a new way to think about real-life problems—and a way to talk to her dad about them. “Just last week I was dropping Julia off at school, and she really didn’t want to go in. She’s had some problems with bullying this year, nothing physical, just verbal. A few friends of hers decided they didn’t want to be her friend anymore and have been giving her a really hard time. It’s been rough on her.
“It’s not something she usually talks to me about—she’d rather talk to her mom about that stuff. But when we pulled up at school last week, she turned to me and said, ‘Dad, you know what I can do? I can put my armor on.’ I knew what she meant immediately. When she puts on her armor in Minecraft, the monsters, the lava, all the bad stuff—it can’t hurt her.
“I told her that was a great way to think about it. ‘You’re going to put on your diamond armor today, and it won’t matter what anyone says to you. It’ll bounce right off you.’ And she said, ‘Yep,’ and smiled, and hopped out of the car. It was a little thing, but now we’ve got this conversation going. It’s like a secret code, where I can ask her if she needs her armor today, and she knows what I mean, and she knows that I’m proud of her for being so resilient.”
As we’ve seen, games are a particularly easy and efficient way to create mind-and-body synchrony. When you play a game with someone, you don’t have to focus consciously on mirroring or imitating—it just happens naturally as a result of your mutual engagement with the game. But even without games, there are lots of other ways you can intentionally jump-start your biological linkage. Find out how in your next quest.
QUEST 9: The Power of a Good Sync
If you want to strengthen your mind-and-body connection to friends and family, all it takes is a good sync.
What to do: Take one or two minutes out of your 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.