Mimic Mastery

Stole this from Reveries.com

Researchers are now saying what good sales people (and con artists) have known all along -- that rapport between people "is highly dependent on mimicry," reports Benedict Carey in The New York Times (2/12/08). In one recent experiment by Rick van Baaren of Nijmegen University, a "research team mimicked half the participants while they spoke, roughly mirroring the posture and the position of their arms and legs, taking care not to be too obvious." A few minutes later, the researcher "dropped six pens on the floor, making it look like an accident." As it turned out, "participants who had been mimicked were two to three times as likely to pick up the pens as those who had not." In another experiment, this time with Duke University students, participants who were mimicked were more likely to give positive feedback on a new sports drink. Yet another experiment found that the mimicked people were even more enthusiastic about the drink if they "knew that the interviewer, the mimic, had a stake in the product's success." Thing is, the mimicry will backfire bigtime if the mimicked realize they are being imitated. At that point, the mimicry turns into mockery, which produces a negative result.The art of mimicry depends on a certain subtlety, achieved through a slight, one- to two-second, delay and minor alteration of the mimicked mannerism. So, if the subject crosses his legs, the mimic waits a couple of seconds before following, and then by crossing the opposite leg ... "The idea is to be a mirror, but a slow, imperfect one ... Follow too closely and most people catch it -- and the game is over." But get it right, and apparently you can't miss: "When you're being mimicked in a good way," says neuroscientist Jean Decety, "it communicates a kind of pleasure, a social high .. and I suspect it activates areas of the brain involved in sensing reward."