Pre­vi­ously I dis­cussed how body lan­guage mim­icry increases affec­tion by help­ing the mim­ic­ker see the other per­son as they want to be seen.

Over a decade after it was con­ducted I’ve now read details of “the first rig­or­ous study look­ing at body lan­guage mim­icry” and its effects. Affec­tion­ately known as ‘the chameleon effect’, three ques­tions were asked:

  1. Do peo­ple auto­mat­i­cally mimic oth­ers, even strangers?
  2. Does mim­icry increase liking?
  3. Do high-perspective-takers exhibit the chameleon effect more?

The answer to each of these ques­tions was a resound­ing Yes, how­ever it was the link to hyp­no­tism that inter­ested me the most:

One influ­en­tial the­ory of hyp­no­sis says that in the hyp­notic state the con­scious will is weak­ened so that sug­ges­tions from the hyp­no­tist are car­ried out automatically.

This is actu­ally an extreme ver­sion of what hap­pens when we mimic other people’s body lan­guage. In some senses, when two peo­ple are really get­ting along, their feet-waggling and face-touching in per­fect har­mony, it’s like they’ve hyp­no­tised each other.

Eric Barker also high­lights the impor­tant sen­tences from the abstracts of five stud­ies look­ing at body lan­guage mim­icry and its effects.