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By Dana Frisch

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Laugh and the world laughs with you, the saying
goes, and this is especially true for couples and roommates, the results of
a new study suggest.



It seems that couples and roommates tend to have similar emotional reactions
as time goes by. So if your roommate or lover laughs out loud at movies or
gets weepy over hurt puppies, you may too -- given time.


This so-called emotional convergence seems to be beneficial to friendships
and romantic relationships, making them stronger and longer lasting.


Everyday experience suggests that people are capable of "catching" the mood
of a spouse or friend, said lead author Dr. Cameron Anderson. But he told
Reuters Health that he was surprised by the extent to which peoples'
emotions converged in his study, which is reported in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology (news - web sites).


"The romantic partners and roommates were virtually becoming the same
emotional person over time," said Anderson, a visiting assistant professor
of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.


In the first part of the study, 60 heterosexual couples at the University of
Wisconsin in Madison answered questions about their personality, their
satisfaction with their relationship and the balance of power within it.


To test emotional convergence, partners discussed positive and negative
situations -- such as a recent success or an ongoing worry. Then each
partner privately reported his or her feelings regarding the issue.


Six months later, the 38 couples that were still together repeated the
experiment. The couples maintained distinct personalities, but they were
more closely attuned emotionally than they had been at the start of the
study, the researchers found.


Although couples' emotions converged over time, similar emotions might have
drawn them together in the first place. Couples that stayed together during
the study were more emotionally similar than couples that broke up, the
researchers point out.


Anderson's team also found that the partner who had less power in the
relationship did most of the changing in terms of emotions.


In other experiments, which involved college students who lived together in
dormitories, the researchers found that roommates tended to have more
similar emotional responses toward the end of the school year. The
researchers gauged emotion by having students watch film clips that tend to
elicit laughs or tears.


Roommates whose emotions converged the most during the school year tended to
become closer friends than roommates whose emotions did not become as
similar, according to the report.


The study also found that the roommate who had a lower social status in the
dormitory tended to change more than popular roommates.


Anderson said these results show that "people's emotional responses to
events are not completely fixed and rigid."


According to the Illinois researcher, emotional similarity could be helpful
in assembling the most productive corporate team, and might be an important
consideration when searching for love or friendships.


SOURCE: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2003;84:1054-1068.