To be like you to be liked by you

Abstract

Behavioral accommodation, the adjustment of one's own behavior to match that of other people, is prevalent in human communication, but people differ in the extent to which they accommodate each other. This paper presents a laboratory study examining how cultural background affects behavioral accommodation in awareness information gathering behaviors. Results suggested that members of collectivistic cultures (e.g., China) adjusted their behaviors to match those of their partners, when they were working with someone from other culture, whereas members of individualistic cultures (e.g.: the United States) did not accommodate when in the same situation. Our results suggest that accommodation exists even in online collaborations where no linguistic elements are involved, but this existence is affected by one's cultural background.

Characterizing the Linguistic Chameleon: Personal and Social Correlates of Linguistic Style Accommodation

“…By doing so, we can explore the relative importance of verbal versus nonverbal communication in impression formation. Furthermore, individuals from cultures which value social relationships (i.e., collectivist cultures such as China) have been shown to be more likely to accommodate their behavior compared to individualist cultures which value task efficiency, such as the United States (Bi, Fussell, & Birnholtz, ). Examining whether the same effects of social power upon linguistic accommodation occur with participants of a more collectivist culture would be interesting.…”