Paper Blogs 07

Reference Paper

The Chameleon Effect: The Perception-Behavior Link and Social Interaction

Tanya L. Chartrand and John A. Bargh

(Digital Object Identifier: 10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893)

Overview of the Paper

Non-conscious mimicry of postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partner is referred as the chameleon effect. The chameleon effect is such that one’s behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others. The authors suggest that perception-behavior link is the mechanism involved. In this paper the authors perform three experiments to prove their hypotheses. This paper is cited for more than 1500 times according to Google scholar.

In the first experiment, each participant talked with two different confederates separately. The confederates acted differently in each session. Behavior of confederates was varied from smiled/not smiled or rubbed face/shook foot. After the experiment behavior of the participants were analyzed. The result of the experiments supported the authors’ hypothesis that individuals passively took on the mannerisms and facial expressions of those of around them without the intention or reason to do so.

In second experiment, the authors wanted to see whether behavior matching increases the change of liking the conversation, and create a sense of smoother interactions. The experimental results supported the hypothesis that mimicry increases liking and fosters smooth, harmonious interactions.

In third experiment the authors wanted to see whether everyone is involved in same degree of behavioral and postural mimicry, that is, show the same degree of chameleon effect. Their result proved that individuals with greater tendency to take the perspective of others are more likely to involve in behavioral mimicry.

Evaluation and Validity of the Paper

On the experimental data of the authors conducted a repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the number of times participants engaged in the mannerisms per minute for the first experiment. On the second and the third experimental data, the authors perform statistical approach to prove their hypotheses.

 

Improvement Scopes

One extension of this paper will be to model an automated system which automatically detects the chameleon effect of human behavior, even when the behavior mimicry occurs in most minimal circumstances. 

Further Reading

One of the interesting articles, which are cited by this paper, is “Coordinated movement and rapport in teacher-student interactions”, by F. J. Bernieri [2] (Digital Object Identifier: 10.1007/BF00986930). In this paper, 19 teaching dyads of high school students were measured for their interpersonal coordination and rapport.

[1] T. Chartrand and J. Bargh, “The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction.” Journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 76, no. 6, p. 893, 1999.

[2] F. J. Bernieri, “Coordinated movement and rapport in teacher-student interactions.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 12, 120-138.