Smile when life is stranded: Positive feedback promotes romantic couples’ cooperation and neural synchrony

Emotional communication is crucial for maintaining the romantic relationships of couples, particularly in situations of failed cooperation. However, little is known about how expressions of happiness and anger affect the subsequent behavioural performance of couples and their neural synchrony mechanisms in the context of cooperative failure. To address this, lover dyads were asked to perform a cooperative task with a high probability of failure while viewing their partner’s happy or angry expressions as feedback. Meanwhile, neural activity was recorded via functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results showed that happy expressions promote intraindividual emotional experience, emotional similarity, and cooperative performance more than do angry expressions, and such a facilitated effect was associated with higher interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in the right Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG) and lower INS at right Superior Frontal Gyrus (SFG). These findings can guide emotional communication strategies for couples in managing failures and promoting positive interactions.