We laugh, in other words, to show someone that we want to connect with them—and our companions laugh back to demonstrate they want to connect with us, as well. This is the same kind of reciprocity that powers the Fast Friends Procedure. It’s an example of emotional contagion. And so it follows that we exhibit emotional intelligence not just by hearing another person’s feelings, but by showing we have heard them. Laughter, and other nonlinguistic expressions such as gasps and sighs, or smiles and frowns, are embodiments of the matching principle, which says that we communicate by aligning our
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