Everyone thinks they're unique and independent, but how much of your behavior is based on how much your brain is copying from people around you? You'll discover how you unconsciously adapt the way you behave, speak, and move according to who you're talking to, who you're trying to please, or who you'd like to be like in the future.
The do's and
don'ts of mirroring.
don'ts of mirroring.
In the Brain Games episode "Follow the Leader," you learned that you are hard-wired to mimic gaze, gestures and even patterns of speech. You can utilize mirroring in order to form connections with other people, and to persuade them to give you things that you want. But it also can go disastrously awry. "Mimicry is a crucial part of social intelligence," University of California-San Diego psychology professor Piotr Winkielman explained in 2011. "But it is not enough to simply know how to mimic. It’s also important to know when and when not to. The success of mirroring depends on mirroring the right people at the right time for the right reasons. Sometimes the socially intelligent thing to do is not to imitate." Here is some advice on when NOT to engage in mirroring:
Don’t mimic someone who is hostile to you. Mirroring, in the right instances, can help make a person seem more competent. But sometimes it backfires. In a 2011 study published by Winkielman and colleagues in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers had subjects watch mock job interviews, including some in which the interviewers were condescending to the interviewees. In those interviews, the observers rated interviewees’ competence as lower if they tried to mimic the interviewers’ gestures. So if you’re talking to someone who is hostile, you’re better off just being yourself.
Don’t be too obvious. People don’t like the feeling that they’re being manipulated. So as a 2013 Forbes article on job interviewing techniques notes, it’s important to be careful not to tip off a job interviewer that you’re deliberately imitating his or her gestures. Instead, wait for 30 to 50 seconds before imitating a physical gesture, or slightly modify the gesture so that it’s similar but not precisely identical to what the interviewer did.
Don’t get too wrapped up in mirroring. As Forbes points out, even if you deftly mimic a job interviewer’s mannerisms and speech, you’re going to waste that effort if you neglect to listen to the interviewer’s questions and answer them thoughtfully. "Remember that one of the reasons mirroring establishes rapport is that it forces you to see things from someone else’s perspective," the magazine advises.
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