The Ultimate Body Language Book

Chapter 12 - Mirroring And Building Of Rapport
What To Mirror To Gain Favours
When people’s bodies are out of sink, the differences of opinion are amplified.
Proper mirroring is far from the game we play as children. The goal of kid’s is to irritate their opponent
with exact copying of gestures even expressions and word, whereas the goal of adults is to formulate
agreement and rapport. In adults, necessarily, more subtle mirroring must follow. In the experiments
listed above, the researchers set to mirror only those actions which occur subconsciously, those that
happen out of normal awareness. Movements such as foot shaking, body scratching, face or hair
touching or changes in posture are good ways to start the mirroring process. Your goal should always
be to avoid getting caught consciously mirroring someone else since being detected will create negative
feelings more so than if no mirroring was done at all. Motions such as leaning in, crossing legs and
folding arms can also be used, but must be done with caution since these are much larger motions and
can be more easily detected.
Echoing which is like mirroring where similar body postures are replicated, but of which happen
sometime later, is a technique that makes the rapport building process more subtle. In echoing, postures
and gestures are not concurrent with what is going on with others, but instead happen after some time
has elapsed. To be effective, echoing happens within thirty seconds to a minute of separation, but can
even happen with several minutes of separation, where only subtle rapport is felt.
Where body positions are fluent, yet echoed, and bodies seem to jive as if in an elaborate dance and
where conversation flows smoothly we find “total synchrony.” We say that these people are on the
same “wavelength.”
Some ways we mirror with our bodies:
[A] Shifting weight from one foot to the other foot or keeping the weight on the same foot.
[B] Leaning on a bar top or up against a wall or other structure.
[C] Crossing the legs in the same direction or opposite direction when facing each other.