Body Language Evolved as a Type of Social 'Glue'

University of California in San Diego (UCSD) investigators determined that the evolutionary explanation for the development of body language is rather simple – this set of behaviors acts like a “social glue” of sorts.

What this does is it enables humans to bond and trust each other without having to make an extra effort to do so. At the same time, it allows people to detect those who are being untruthful, or who are trying to deceive others.

Most of the times, this is done unconsciously, and individuals just say that there's something about the other person that they just don't like. When asked to pinpoint the exact flaw, they usually say that it's more of a feeling than a fact.

Interestingly, it would appear that humans also evolved the ability to mimic the body language of the person they are interacting with. This further contributes to bonding, investigators say, allowing both partners in a conversation to become more attuned to each other's behavior.

The new study was authored by UCSD Psychology Department scientists Piotr Winkielman and Liam Kavanagh, who worked together with Christopher Suhler and Patricia Churchland, who are both philosophers at the university.

Their work will appear in an upcoming issue of the scientific journal Psychological Science. Its main conclusion is that social mimicry is a multi-faced, difficult-to-understand phenomenon that is a lot more complex than first thought.

“Mimicry is a crucial part of social intelligence. “But it is not enough to simply know how to mimic. It’s also important to know when and when not to,” says Winkielman, a professor of psychology at the university.

“The success of mirroring depends on mirroring the right people at the right time for the right reasons. Sometimes the socially intelligent thing to do is not to imitate,” he adds, quoted by PsychCentral.

An interesting aspect of the study was demonstrating that observers monitoring a conversation in which participants mimic each other's behaviors may think less or more of a conversation partner, depending on what type of attitude he or she adopts.

In other words, when an interlocutor is perceived as behaving badly, but having good intentions, he or she is forgiven from harsh judgment, and does not lose reputation points.

“It’s good to have the capacity to mimic, but an important part of social intelligence is knowing how to deploy this capacity in a selective, intelligent, context-dependent manner, and understanding, even implicitly, when mirroring can reflect badly on you,” Winkielman concludes.

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