Psychology of Communication: Effects of verbal Imitation

Let's now take a look at two very interesting studies in which only verbal imitation was used. And the first one is the study by Kulesha and colleagues published in 2014 in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. The title of the study was The Echo Effect, The Power of Verbal Mimicry to Influence Pro-Social Behavior. Participants in this study were 330 customers of a currency exchange office, who of course did not really know that they were participating in a study. And they had several experimental conditions. In the first one, they used verbal mimicry by copying quite exactly what the other person said. Like for example, the other person said, Then the cashier just said, And then he handed out the money. In a second condition, they used paraphrasing, which meant that they just changed the order of the words, for example. So for example, if somebody said, the cashier said, In a third condition, which was called the dialogue condition, the cashier was told to use the same number of words, but with a different content. So for example, if somebody said, again, transaction exchange of $1,000, he might have said, And then there might have been a little interaction between the two. And as we know from previous studies, as soon as there is a little dialogue between two people, people also often tend to become a bit more helpful, which we will see in a minute as well. And in a fourth condition, which was a control condition, the cashier just answered with short questions. So if the other person said, transaction exchange of $1,000, he said, for example, okay, or right away. In the last condition, which as well was a control condition, he didn't say anything, he just did his job. And the big question was, how much would the participants afterwards spend for a charity organization? Because after the transaction, the cashier asked them whether they would be willing to donate a little bit of money for a student named Matteo, and the money would directly go to the Sunshine Foundation, which actually exists. And all the money they collected in this study was also spent to this charity organization. When we take a look at the results, we see that in the control condition in which the cashier said nothing at all during the transaction interaction, only 49% were willing to give a little bit of money. Whereas in the second control condition in which he was a little bit more friendly, and he said, okay, or right away, there about 67% made a donation. In the dialogue condition, in which he used the same number of words, but he didn't actually mimic their behavior, about 80% made a donation. Whereas in the copy and the paraphrase conditions, in which he either directly copies the wording, or he paraphrased the wording by changing the position of the words, the willingness to donate a little bit of money was the highest. When we take a look at these results, and we see that the dialogue condition was almost equally effective as the mimicry conditions, one might hypothesize that both strategies, to involve somebody in a dialogue, or to imitate him verbally, might actually be based on the same mechanisms. So maybe both strategies leads to the conclusion that we feel connected to the other person. And therefore, it's interesting to take a look at the next study, also published by Kulesha and colleagues in 2016, in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. And the title of this study was, The Conversational Chameleon, An Investigation into the Link Between Dialogue and Verbal Mimicry. And the big question of this study was indeed, are both techniques, the dialogue involvement technique and the verbal mimicry techniques, actually maybe the same? And therefore, they used a quite similar scenario like in the previous study, because this time the participants were 180 customers of a kiosk where you could buy, for example, bus tickets or newspapers. And again, at the end of the interaction, the participants were asked to make a donation to a charity organization. In one condition, they used verbal imitation. For example, if a customer said, a pack of cigarettes, please. Then the owner of the kiosk said, a pack of cigarettes. So he just repeated what the other person said. In the dialogue condition, he began a little talk to the other person. Like for example, he said, how are you today? Or he made a remark about the weather. Like for example, isn't it a great sunny day? And in a third condition, they used both techniques together. So first of all, the wording of the participant was copied when he said, a pack of cigarettes, please. He said, a pack of cigarettes. But then he also started a little conversation by saying, it's really hot today, isn't it? In a control condition, none of the two techniques was used. When somebody said, can I have some cigarettes, please? He just said, okay. And then afterwards, just like in all conditions, the person was asked whether she or he would be willing to give some money to a charity organization. The results were quite impressive because whereas in the control condition, only 50% were willing to spend a little bit of money. In the dialogue and the mimicry conditions, the willingness to spend money was already much higher. In the dialogue condition, there were 80%. Whereas in the mimicry condition, there was 77%. But the strongest effect was indeed observed for the combined group in which both techniques had been used together. In this group, 93% of the participants gave money to the charity organization. So the authors conclude that the two techniques are not based exactly on the same working mechanisms, which means that a combined use might be even more effective.