For this week's entry, as I was once again browsing the interweb for material to discuss/show on the blog, I stumbled upon this 2 week-old clip on Veoh.com on an aspect of body language or kinesics called mirroring. Take a look here:
Watch Body Language: Mirroring in How to Videos View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Apparently, this "mirroring" technique is an effective (as claimed by the expert, not me!) non verbal cue to actually make people like you just that wee bit more..
The basic idea is that when meeting other people, to make them more receptive to you, what you need to do is to try and take note of their body language and then try to mimic them ..and... more often than not the ensuing communication proccess would be an enjoyable one as the person you're communicating with would feel more at ease with you.. It's like what the expert says at 00:36 "..it's difficult to be mean to yourself.."
Most of the time, I think what you would be mirroring would be adaptors which are defined as
"behaviors that people use to adapt to stresses and to satisfy personal needs."
And yes, I think "mirroring" does make some sense if adaptors come into play. For example if you are meeting someone new, there is bound to be some sort of stress or anxiety, and people have their own adaptors which they unconciously will display because of that. By mimicking them, you're essentially and very discreetly also informing them through your body language that , "Hey, you're not the only one who's scared or anxious. I am too!", and by behaving similarly to them, it reinforces some sense of familiarity to the other person and could help to dissipate and lessen any tension or anxiety.
So the next time you want to hit it off with someone or trying to persuade your boss for a pay raise..try to look out for certain body language clues like adaptors or certain affect displays..and subtlely mimic these nonverbal cues..who knows you might actually make a new friend or get that much sought after promotion..
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2 comments:
Hey..I heard of this technique before. Didn't know its called mirror-ing though. I think that rather than just imitating adaptors or other body language, imitating speech is important too. In fact, most of us unconsciously already do that for the way we speak. You know? Like how we unconsciously sound different when we speak with ang mohs
yeah..i think u're right about the mimicking speech part..
I kinda experienced it before too..it's like involuntarily you suddenly have that funny accent to your speech when say, you meet an angmoh for the first time and it so happens the ang moh is the one who initiates the conversation,so your reply tends to one way or another mimic the ang moh's accent...
..tho most of the time i catch myself after the first few spoken words and consciously try to speak like how i regularly speak..haha..
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