Mind Hacks

Hack #98. Monkey See, Monkey Do

We mimic accents, gestures, and mannerisms without even noticing, and it seems it’s the mere act of perception that triggers it.

We’re born imitators, even without knowing we’re doing it. I have a British accent, but whenever I spend a couple of weeks in North America, I start to pick up the local pronunciation. It’s the same with hanging around certain groups of friends and ending up using words common in that group without realizing I’m picking them up.

Imitation doesn’t require immersion in a culture. You can start mirroring people’s movements without realizing it in moments.

In Action

I find a lot of psychology experiments a little mean, because they often involve telling the participants the experiment is about one thing, when actually it’s about something else entirely. Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh’s experiments on what they dub the Chameleon Effect fall into this category of keeping the participants in the dark (but are harmless enough not to be mean). ¹

Chartrand and Bargh had volunteers take part in a dummy task of describing photographs while sitting in pairs, taking turns looking at each photo and speaking outloud their free associations. What the volunteers didn’t know was that describing the photographs wasn’t the point of the experiment and that their partner wasn’t a volunteer but a confederate in league with the experiment organizers. The confederate exhibited some subtle behavior, either rubbing his face or shaking his foot for the ...