This article was about the so called "chameleon effect" which is when one person mimicks another. I should say this could also happen with a group of people. A study was taken to test whether or not people who mimicked others were more likely to be "liked" by the other person. In this study one person was talking to a group of people about different topics and vary there manerisms. This could involve more smiling, wagging your foot, or touching your face etc. The study turned out that more people copied this person (who they just met) and did similar manerisms.
Another study was taken where one person was again talking to a group of people, but this time copied their manerisms. After the conversation, the 78 people were asked to rate how much they liked the person on a scale of 1-9 on smoothness and interaction. For people whose body language and manerisms had been copied, their rating was closer to 7 in both categories. For the people who were not copied, their rating was closer to 6.
I don't think this is a very valid way to experiment about whether copying another person helps make them like you or not. I say this because in general some people might think you're just plain weird if your copying what they do, and others could like the attention. So I think that the results could also depend on different people's personalities.
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The experiment really didn't give much of a difference between the two studies which surprises me. I would expect someone who is mimicked to like the mimicker more if they are, in a sense, being "complimented" by the mimick. Maybe the numbers were so close because they felt they were being made fun of? Not a very clear cut study.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool that more people liked the person that was copying their moves. I guess it kinda makes since because it's like them talking, with all the action and all.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree, I tried to think about whether it matters or not to me if someone is copying me, and I think it would just be kind of awkward to see someone doing what you just finished doing.
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