There have been many studies which show that human beings do even more mimicking and imitating in social relationships than even our closest cousin primates.
Chimpanzees, orangutans, and other primates spend a lot of time mimicking the behavior of other members in their troop or society.
Well, if you are a human resource director, you need to know this.
You also need to know this if you are a business manager, as you can develop rapport with employees, and help make things run smoother.
Let's say you'd like to be known as a great interviewer, or a very well-liked teacher, if that's so, it's rather easy.
This technique doesn't just work with human to human communication, as it also works with human to robot communication.
In fact, Carnegie Mellon University has a robot with a human face, it is run with artificial intelligence, and it mimics the person it's talking to, and by doing so humans respond very well to it, and actually experience an emotional bonding.
Now then, there was an interesting article I happened to read in Cell Press in the NeuroView section; "The Impact of Neuroscience on Philosophy," by Patricia Smith Churchland of the Philosophy Department, UCSD (DOI 10.
1016/j.
neuron.
2008.
10.
023).
"Psychological studies on unconscious mimicry in humans show that the posture, mannerisms, prosody, and words of the experimenter are unknowingly mimicked by the experimental subject as the two engage on a shared task.
Additionally, subjects whom the experimenter mimics tend to evaluate the experimenter more favorably than if they were not mimicked (Chartrand and Dalton, 2008).
Subjects who experience social stress before beginning the task display a higher level of unconscious mimicry than otherwise.
" Interestingly enough, I was discussing this the other day with someone who is a financial planner, and their firm audits them once every year.
Then, the firm asks in a questionnaire if they liked the auditor.
The auditor's which get the highest grades, normally are not allowed to audit the same people next year, because they don't want them to get too cozy with those they are auditing, however, it does help the auditor's career path, and it also shows that the firm is not developing an unfortunate adversarial relationship, while it ensures all the T's are crossed and the I's dotted, while maintaining business continuity and enforcement of the regulations in the industry.
Am I saying that you should purposely mimic the person you are talking to in order to develop an emotional bond? No, but you need to be aware of these things, and what I think will happen is you will notice yourself automatically mimicking others' that you are talking to, however, rather than pulling away from that, you should let those slight imitations of body language, and facial expression, perhaps even verbalization flow.
After all, it will be in your favor, and you will have better interpersonal relationship experiences.
Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Chimpanzees, orangutans, and other primates spend a lot of time mimicking the behavior of other members in their troop or society.
Well, if you are a human resource director, you need to know this.
You also need to know this if you are a business manager, as you can develop rapport with employees, and help make things run smoother.
Let's say you'd like to be known as a great interviewer, or a very well-liked teacher, if that's so, it's rather easy.
This technique doesn't just work with human to human communication, as it also works with human to robot communication.
In fact, Carnegie Mellon University has a robot with a human face, it is run with artificial intelligence, and it mimics the person it's talking to, and by doing so humans respond very well to it, and actually experience an emotional bonding.
Now then, there was an interesting article I happened to read in Cell Press in the NeuroView section; "The Impact of Neuroscience on Philosophy," by Patricia Smith Churchland of the Philosophy Department, UCSD (DOI 10.
1016/j.
neuron.
2008.
10.
023).
"Psychological studies on unconscious mimicry in humans show that the posture, mannerisms, prosody, and words of the experimenter are unknowingly mimicked by the experimental subject as the two engage on a shared task.
Additionally, subjects whom the experimenter mimics tend to evaluate the experimenter more favorably than if they were not mimicked (Chartrand and Dalton, 2008).
Subjects who experience social stress before beginning the task display a higher level of unconscious mimicry than otherwise.
" Interestingly enough, I was discussing this the other day with someone who is a financial planner, and their firm audits them once every year.
Then, the firm asks in a questionnaire if they liked the auditor.
The auditor's which get the highest grades, normally are not allowed to audit the same people next year, because they don't want them to get too cozy with those they are auditing, however, it does help the auditor's career path, and it also shows that the firm is not developing an unfortunate adversarial relationship, while it ensures all the T's are crossed and the I's dotted, while maintaining business continuity and enforcement of the regulations in the industry.
Am I saying that you should purposely mimic the person you are talking to in order to develop an emotional bond? No, but you need to be aware of these things, and what I think will happen is you will notice yourself automatically mimicking others' that you are talking to, however, rather than pulling away from that, you should let those slight imitations of body language, and facial expression, perhaps even verbalization flow.
After all, it will be in your favor, and you will have better interpersonal relationship experiences.
Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
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