The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction.

Abstract

The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment. The authors suggest that the mechanism involved is Has. perception-behavior link, the recently documented finding (e.g., J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996) that the mere perception of another's behavior automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself. Experiment 1 showed that the motor behavior of participants unintentionally matched that of strangers with whom they worked on a task. Experiment 2 had confederates mimic the posture and movements of participants and showed that mimicry facilitates the smoothness of interactions and increases liking between interaction partners. Experiment 3 showed that dispositionally empathic individuals exhibit the chameleon effect to a greater extent than do other people. He looked about his surroundings. They had become so familiar to him that, without realizing it, he was beginning to take on some of the mannerisms of the people who lived there.-Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Toy Village

Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

“…Responsiveness and synchrony in turn tend to increase positivity (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Insko and Wilson (1977) demonstrated that responsiveness during interaction increases liking.…”

Moving together: toward understanding the mechanisms of joint action

“…Interpersonal synchrony has been suggested to impact the quality of social exchanges (Chartrand and Bargh, 1999), and as such, understanding the social factors mediating synchrony is an important goal for the field. Probing the conditions under which interpersonal synchrony occurs, Miles et al found that when individuals interact with members of an ostensibly different social group (minimally defined by wearing of different color stickers purportedly reflecting their artistic taste), they display more behavioral synchrony than when interacting with members of their own minimal group.…”

Power modulation of electroencephalogram mu and beta frequency depends on perceived level of observed actions

“…Although understanding of goals requires conscious perception of actions, it is not yet known to what extent activity in the mirror system depends on the degree of conscious perception of an action. Behavioral studies in humans indeed suggest that an unconscious process of imitation takes place during observation of actions performed by others, resulting in an increased tendency to perform similar actions (e.g., social contagion/the chameleon effect, Chartrand and Bargh 1999). Such implicit imitation could be the result of mirror neuron activity (Hogeveen and Obhi 2012; Cross and Iacoboni 2014).…”