In this talk, we draw on dialectics and Bayesian accounts of cognition, suggesting that a fine-grained analysis of social interaction might allow us to reconsider the self beyond the static individual, that is how it emerges and manifests itself in social relations. In this light, we put forward the dialectical misattunement hypothesis, which views various psychiatric conditions, such as autism, not as a (disordered) function within single brains but rather as a dynamic interpersonal mismatch, unfolding across various time scales. To operationalize our suggestion, we present two-person psychophysiology and multilevel analysis of intersubjectivity as a means to formally study the self and psychopathology beyond the individual brain. In brief, our results indicate that in real-time social interactions humans highly align with each other across multiple levels of description, from decision-making and gaze behavior to facial expressions and metacognition.
Interestingly, such an alignment is most prominent in collaborative
contexts and between people who have a bond of mutual affection.