Ever met someone and instantly clicked? What creates that effortless and instant connection? Let’s explore the psychology behind why you bond so quickly.
Science reveals why we instantly bond with certain people.
Key points
- People who click often experience neural synchrony, showing similar brain activity.
- We tend to form instant connections with those who share our background, values, or meaningful experiences.
- Laughter is a secret signal of connection. Sharing a laugh makes us feel closer and crave more interaction.
Sometimes you meet someone, and you just know that you can communicate. It happens that you say hello to a new coworker or share small talk with a security officer, and you have an instant sense of connectedness.
Most probably, you had that feeling with the closest of your friends or your romantic partners from the very first time you met. Here, I’ve gathered some possible reasons for that phenomenon from psychological research on interpersonal relationships.
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Neural Synchrony
Neurobiological factors may play a role. In a 2018 study conducted at Dartmouth College, 42 volunteers watched short video clips while scientists measured their brain activity using fMRI.
It turns out that people in close social relationships showed similar brain activity, including in the areas involved in emotion processing and selective attention, and even in regions in the inferior parietal lobe that have been linked to discerning others’ mental states.
According to Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College, people in the same social network also show similar neural activity when processing the narrative content of stories and generally making sense of the world. Neural synchrony found in strangers can predict a desire for future contact in both parties.
This finding may also be related to previous research that suggests people who use the same gestures tend to “click.” The rate of their neural synchrony as well as their behavioral synchrony also may increase the longer they stay in contact with each other.
Why We Click With Someone? Understanding Instant Connection
1. Speaking the Same Language—Literally
The way we speak can also predict whether we’ll “click” with someone. Research on Language Style Matching (LSM) suggests that people who unconsciously mirror each other’s linguistic style feel a greater sense of connection, even in their very first interactions.
LSM isn’t about what we say, but how we say it—specifically, our use of function words like and, the, it, and to. A study on speed dating found that pairs with high LSM were far more likely to express mutual romantic interest than those with lower LSM.
Even when people come from different backgrounds, their matching language patterns can signal an underlying connection, making them more likely to stay in contact.
So, if you’ve ever met someone and instantly felt like the conversation just flows, science suggests it might not be random—it could be your words syncing in ways you don’t even realize.
2. Birds of a Feather Flock Together
They do. Feathers are essential cues for birds to recognize each other from afar, and they tend to come closer to each other if they sense that they have similar feather patterns.
Humans also tend to use “feathers,” meaning that they use various cues to detect each other’s demographic characteristics, such as age, ethnicity, class, or education level. There is a greater chance that they will instantly enjoy being with people who share similar characteristics since they tend to feel that they connect more with them.
3. Shared Vulnerability
Sometimes we meet a stranger at a vulnerable point in our lives, or our paths cross as we work toward a goal or solve a problem together. Psychological research has shown that sharing such situations creates a shared sense of vulnerability and makes us tend to feel understood, more secure, and connected.
In Click: The Magic of Instant Connections, author Ori Brafman also suggests that we can arbitrarily create such “vulnerable environments” by asking meaning-making questions—for instance, What’s something meaningful that’s happened to you in the last week? To increase the sense of authenticity and appropriateness.
4. Shared Sense of Humor
Laughing together can create an illusion for people that they get on well together, but sharing a sense of humor can initially make us feel connected as well.
Research by Robin Dunbar of Oxford University reports significant effects of a similar sense of humor on later altruism. Looking at the subject from a different perspective, a study from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, involved having strangers watch videos and recording how much they laughed, or whether they just smiled or stayed neutral.
Results showed that across the different videos, the amount of shared laughter had consistent effects concerning the participants’ sense of similarity to their video partner and tended to make them desire future contact.
“For people who are laughing together, shared laughter signals that they see the world in the same way, and it momentarily boosts their sense of connection,” says Sara Algoe, the social psychologist who authored the study.
Copyright Sebnem Ture 2025.
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For more insights visit: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stories-we-tell-lives-we-lead
References Neural Synchrony: Parkinson, C., Kleinbaum, A. M., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Similar neural responses predict friendship. Nature Communications, 9(1), 332. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02722-7 Language Style Matching (LSM): Ireland, M. E., Slatcher, R. B., Eastwick, P. W., Scissors, L. E., Finkel, E. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2011). Language style matching predicts relationship initiation and stability. Psychological Science, 22(1), 39–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610392928 Shared Vulnerability: Brafman, O., & Brafman, R. (2010). Click: The magic of instant connections. Broadway Books. Google Books Link Shared Humor: 1) Dunbar, R. I. M. (2022). Laughter and its role in the evolution of human social bonding. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 377(1863), 20210176. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0176. 2) Algoe, S. B., Fredrickson, B. L., & Gable, S. L. (2013). The social functions of the emotion of gratitude via expression. Emotion, 13(4), 605–609. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032701
Written by: Sebnem Ture M.Sc.
Originally appeared on Psychology Today
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