Don’t copycat an unpopular boss’s behavior, study reminds

MSNBC:

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but mindless mimicry can also make you look like a jerk. That’s the gist of a new study on empathetic body language that will appear in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science.

In social situations, people tend to mirror one another as an unconscious show of rapport. Find yourself on a successful first date, for example, and you will often lean in at the same times during conversation. And though most mirroring is done unintentionally, some adopt it as a subtle psychological strategy for closing sales and acing big job interviews.

That said, clueless copycatting may be costly. Piotr Winkielman and Liam Kavanagh of the University of California San Diego psychology department and Christopher Suhler and Patricia Churchland of the school’s philosophy department examined ways in which mimicking the wrong person suggests low social IQ.

Read the whole story: MSNBC