I found this great blog about the chameleon effect. It is about how mimicking what another person does will make them like you more. The blog talked about an experiment that was done by Chartrand and Bargh (1999). In it the researchers wanted three questions answered about the chameleon effect.
First: Do people automatically mimic others, even strangers?
It was found that yes people do automatically mimic others, even strangers. It was found that the participants in the present of a confederate did mimic their actions, face touching went up by 20%, and foot movement went up by 50%.
Second: Does mimicry increase liking?
It was found that you do like someone else more if they are mimicking your behavior. Participants were asked to rate how much they liked the confederate, when the confederate was mimicking the participant, the participants liking of the confederate went up. However the liking did not go up by much. On average the rating went from 5.91 to 6.62.
Third: Do high-perspective-takers exhibit the chameleon effect more?
When they were talking about perspective takers they are referring to the degree to which people naturally take others' perspectives. They found that people who were perspective takers did in fact mimic more than others.
Here is the blog website http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/11/the-chameleon-effect.php. On the website they also go into detail as to how they performed the experiments and what the results showed in more detail. I found this article to be highly interesting because I had always heard that if you were more like someone that you liked each other better. This experiment helped to prove that, but if you mimic someone their liking of you only goes up by a little bit.
If you want to read the actual article about the experiment it can be found at http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/76/6/893.pdf.
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