From the article: Two neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography showed that people with similar personalities tend to have similar brain responses when viewing naturalistic stimuli. This effect was stronger than that of similarity in gender, ethnicity, or political affiliation. The study was published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Each person perceives the surrounding world in her/his own specific way. One person might be inspired by looking at a piece of art, another would not even notice it. One person might enjoy participating in an activity, another would see it as a hassle.

Researchers have explored the roots of these alignments at the neurological level and found that shared experiences, close relationships, but also gender and cognitive styles affect whether two persons experiences would be aligned or not. People also tend to synchronize their brain activities during social interactions. It happens passively when the neural activity is evoked by a common stimulus (something triggering our senses). But is this passive neural synchronization related to personality traits?

“Given the growing polarization in our world nowadays, being able to understand how to see the world from someone else’s perspective seems like a critical thing. Our interest was in understanding what enables such alignment across various levels: from behavioral and psychological to the systemic and neural,” said study authors Sandra Matz of Columbia Business School and Moran Cerf of Northwestern University.