From: Scientific American
Creepy People Leave You Cold
May 9, 2012
Scientific American:
Jack Nicholson, playing the crazed caretaker in The Shining, makes me reach for a blanket. Now a study finds that people we find, well, creepy can actually make us feel colder. The research will be published in the journal Psychological Science. [N. Pontus Leander, Tanya L. Chartrand and John A. Bargh, “You Give Me the Chills: Embodied Reactions to Inappropriate Amounts of Behavioral Mimicry”]
Researchers interviewed 40 college undergraduates. During each interaction, the experimenter was either chummy with the student or very stiff and professional. The investigator also alternated between mimicking students’ posture—a signal of rapport—and not doing anything at all.
Read the whole story: Scientific American
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