Power moves: Complementarity in dominant and submissive nonverbal behavior.

Abstract

Two studies examine complementarity (vs. mimicry) of dominant and submissive nonverbal behaviors. In the first study, participants interacted with a confederate who displayed either dominance (through postural expansion) or submission (through postural constriction). On average, participants exposed to a dominant confederate decreased their postural stance, whereas participants exposed to a submissive confederate increased their stance. Further, participants with complementing responses (dominance in response to submission and submission in response to dominance) liked their partner more and were more comfortable than those who mimicked. In the second study, complementarity and mimicry were manipulated, and complementarity resulted in more liking and comfort than mimicry. The findings speak to the likelihood of hierarchical differentiation.

Where is the love? The social aspects of mimicry

“…When behaviour is related to status, power or hierarchy, humans seem not to imitate. Instead, dominance automatically triggers submissiveness and vice versa (Wiggins 1982;Tiedens & Fragale 2003). Tiedens & Fragale (2003) for example manipulated the dominance or submissiveness of a confederate's posture (e.g.…”

Opposites Fit: Regulatory Focus Complementarity and Relationship Well-Being

“…The domain in which complementarity effects have been most reliably demonstrated is dominancesubmissiveness (Dreyer & Horowitz, 1997;Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). Importantly, whereas complementary dominance orientations have been observed to increase liking and satisfaction for dyads and couples working on joint tasks with a clear common purpose, they do not have these same effects when dyads or couples simply engage in unstructured tasks (Moskowitz, Ho, &Turcotte-Tremblay, 2007).…”

“…Dominance is a domain in which complementarity effects have been extensively demonstrated in previous research (Dreyer & Horowitz, 1997;Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). Thus, we controlled for interpersonal dominance in this study to ensure that any effects we found for regulatory focus were independent of dominance effects.…”

Social interaction contexts bias the perceived expressions of interactants.

“…Second, patterns of covariation present in social interactions may encourage complementary biases, whereby the expression of one interactant predicts the associated expression. Importantly, not all types of interaction are imitative; sometimes the behaviour of one interactant predicts nonmatching, complementary behaviours in another (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). Experiment 1 sought evidence for one or both of these biases.…”