Interpersonal synchrony is characterized by a temporary alignment of periodic behaviors with another person. This process requires that at least one of the two individuals monitors and adjusts his/her movements to maintain alignment with the other individual (the referent). Interestingly, recent research on interpersonal synchrony has found that people who are motivated to befriend an unfamiliar social referent tend to automatically synchronize with their social referents, raising the possibility that synchrony may be employed as an affiliation tool. It is unknown, however, whether the opposite is true; that is, whether the person serving as the referent of interpersonal synchrony perceives synchrony with his/her partner or experiences affiliative feelings toward the partner. To address this question, we performed a series of studies on interpersonal synchrony with a total of 100 participants. In all studies, participants served as the referent with no requirement to monitor or align their behavior with their partners. Unbeknown to the participants, the timings of their "partner's" movements were actually determined by a computer program based on the participant's (i.e., referent's) behavior. Overall, our behavioral results showed that the referent of a synchrony task expressed greater perceived synchrony and greater social affiliation toward a synchronous partner (i.e., one displaying low mean asynchrony and/or a narrow asynchrony range) than with an asynchronous partner (i.e., one displaying high mean asynchrony and/or high asynchrony range). Our neuroimaging study extended these results by demonstrating involvement of brain areas implicated in social cognition, embodied cognition, self-other expansion, and action observation as correlates of interpersonal synchrony (vs. asynchrony). These findings have practical implications for social interaction and theoretical implications for understanding interpersonal synchrony and social coordination.

People use at least two strategies to solve the challenge of understanding another person's mind: inferring that person's perspective by reading his or her behavior (theorization) and getting that person's perspective by experiencing his or her situation (simulation). The five experiments reported here demonstrate a strong tendency for people to underestimate the value of simulation. Predictors estimated a stranger's emotional reactions toward 50 pictures. They could either infer the stranger's perspective by reading his or her facial expressions or simulate the stranger's perspective by watching the pictures he or she viewed. Predictors were substantially more accurate when they got perspective through simulation, but overestimated the accuracy they had achieved by inferring perspective. Predictors' miscalibrated confidence stemmed from overestimating the information revealed through facial expressions and underestimating the similarity in people's reactions to a given situation. People seem to underappreciate a useful strategy for understanding the minds of others, even after they gain firsthand experience with both strategies.

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Pet owners routinely spend money on services, accessories, and gifts for their pets. The present research investigates the affective consequences of pet spending. Specifically, we propose that spending money on pets promotes happiness. As predicted, a lab study demonstrated that pet owners who were randomly assigned to recall a time they spent money on their pet reported greater happiness than those who recalled spending money on themselves. Likewise, a field study demonstrated that pet owners who were randomly assigned to spend $5 on their pet reported greater happiness than those who were assigned to spend on themselves or another person -an effect specific to feelings of happiness rather than to mood more generally. This research offers pet owners an evidence-based strategy for boosting happiness, representing an additional intentional activity that can be used to improve well-being.