Tag Archive for Rapport Building

Summary – Chapter 13

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In this chapter we looked extensively at courtship signals. We learned that men who are not familiar with body language tend to miss the signals put out by women, but that women can be misleading or confusing as message senders, and that it is the women’s job to signal sexual interest. We talked about the most common sexual signals women use, starting with displays of submission including pigeon toes or tibial torsion, shoulder shrugs, exposing the neck or wrists, head tilt, smiling, the forehead bow and childlike playfulness. The second class of signals, we discussed where ways to create sexiness such as tossing the hair, tilting the pelvis, the parade, the room encompassing glance, grooming and preening, the leg twine and leg crossing, hiking the skirt and or dressing provocatively. The third way women use to indicate interest that we covered related to proximity such as moving closer, pointing and eye contact and crossing the legs towards her object of affection. The remaining sexual signals were rapport building. We learned that women dress more provocatively and ornament more elaborately when most fertile and receptive to male advances, that echoing and mirroring is a big component in the mating dance, and how squeezing the hand can be used as a kiss test.

We then looked at the main behaviours that can be used by women to avoid male solicitation which included facial expressions such as yawning, frowning, sneering, gaze avoidance, upward gaze, looking away, and staring and gestures such as negative head shaking, nail cleaning, teeth picking or pocketing hands and postural patterns such as arm crossing, holding the trunk rigidly, closing the legs, body contact avoidance or pulling away. These were classified into three main categories; gaze avoidance, gestures and posture patterns.

As we saw, men solicit attention from women in a different way. Men will demonstrate dominance and virility to appear sexier to women, whereas women traditionally display submission. We saw that alpha men will use the cowboy posture to draw attention to their genitals, they will and should eliminate beta male body language to attract women, use more open postures such as legs spread apart, arms uncrossed, keep their hands away from their face, hold a firm upright torso, use their arms and hands to punctuate points in speech, speak slowly with a calm voice, use fewer filler words such as “umms” and “ahhs” and generally take up more space to appear more relaxed and in control. We learned that the dominant male posture happens by placing the feet flat with the body’s weight spread evenly with hips forward and legs slightly wider than shoulder width. We then looked at how men can use negative body language to trick women into thinking they are disinterested in a cat and mouse game, how tonality affects attraction with deeper being sexier, that random smiling can bring about good things and that men should wait until eye contact is established before smiling to anchor a smile to a specific target before breaking eye contact by looking downward. In our final section we covered the tens steps to intimacy.

Who Mirrors More, Men Or Women?

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Research conducted in 1981 by researcher Marianne La France out of Boston College found that women are much more likely to mirror others than men, and the more feminine the women the greater their mirroring. This isn’t surprising at all given the nature of mirroring. As we have covered thus far, mirroring is a form of empathy and rapport building. Mirroring is also a form of submission because one person must initiate positions first, and the other must follow. Women are nurtures by nature and so tend to want to build relationships, one of the tools they use more proficiently is mirroring.

Further research suggests that men are four times less likely to mirror other men, than women are to mirror another woman. Women have also been found to frequently mirror men, whereas men rarely, or only reluctantly, mirror other women, with only one exception, that being during courtship. The reason for this lies in Erno Herman’s research with Leiden University in Netherlands who in 2006 discovered that the administration of testosterone to subjects reduced empathetic behavior through facial mimicry. As mirroring requires an emotional connection in the form of empathy, estrogen rather than testosterone, is a more facilitative hormone. This gives us vital clues to the role of mirroring, and brings us back full circle to the core issue dealt with here, which is that mirroring is a form of rapport building, of which men are less prone to take advantage of.

The fact, as we have covered extensively in this chapter, remains that mirroring can be a great skill in most all facets of life. If you don’t already have it as a part of your repertoire, you should, and if you are a man, should consider it strongly because chances are you don’t do it naturally. Women rate men who display more facial emotions as more caring, intelligent, interesting and attractive which is freely reported by women especially during courtship. This trend naturally extends throughout other areas of life, especially business, but a certain degree of minimizing of expressions should be used when men deal with other men. The research tells us that men tend to rate men who mirror facial expressions in a negative light, describing them as more effeminate. Along the same lines, women who adopt more serious facial expressions when interacting with men, will be seen by them as more intelligent. Thus, to appeal to the opposite sex, the rule of thumb is to use “sex swapping characteristics” whereby we bend toward the sex’s preferences to create more similarity. In other words, men should appear a bit more feminine when interacting with women, and women should appear a bit more masculine when interacting with men.

Men are at an inherent mirroring disadvantage though as researchers have found that they can make fewer than one third the facial expressions that a woman can. What they lack for in facial expressions, though, they make up for in emotional expressions through the body. Therefore, reading body cues is a much better area to consider when reading men. The lack of facial expressions in men, which might be seen as a natural disadvantage, is turned into dominance because men appear less emotional and more “in control”, appearing to maintain their “cool” under more circumstances than women. This doesn’t mean that men fail to experience emotions, because brain scans tell us otherwise. It just means that men are better able to hide their emotions from the rest of us. Women shouldn’t be fooled into thinking men aren’t listening or even empathizing with them simply due to their pan-faced expressions. Women should though, be more watchful of men’s body language, that which happens in areas other than their face, to read their emotions and when they mirror should follow what happens with their arms and legs rather than what happens in their faces which will only be minimal. Conversely, men should do their best to mirror women’s faces as best they can, and make up for whatever expressivity is lacking through other body language channels.

Who Is In Charge Of Mirroring?

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An employee enters his boss’s office as he has called a meeting to discuss the possibility of a pay raise. The employee sits down and raises his case. He has been there for several years and feels that he is due for some form of compensation for his loyalty. As he states his case, the subordinate employee appropriately mirrors his boss’s subtle nuances, he touches his face when he does and fixes his hair, and leans forward when he does. As the employee hits on a particularly sensitive issue, his overtime commitment, which the boss has been firm about being nearly mandatory for the position, the boss quickly moves back into a full body steeple by leaning back with his hands locked behind his head and crosses his legs in a figure four. What should the employee do? The answer is simple, he should concede this stance to his boss as its obvious through his body language that he’s not willing to let this issue slide. When it comes to mirroring, it is always best to use it for rapport building, and not to induce hostility. The boss wins when it comes to dominance and should the employee mirror his steeple, would suffer, perhaps not immediately but at a subconscious level this body language will grind on his boss. Eventually, and if repeated with consistency, the boss would sense something wasn’t right which might lead to even worse hours or job details. The boss would only perceive his negative feelings about his employee as “dislike” or that “something isn’t quite right.” If the goal was to usurp his position and take his job, the employee might consider mirroring his stance to set an air of equality or superiority. Similarly, two high ranking individuals should mirror each other to signal that they hold similar power and won’t be easily pushed over.

A dominant person always has more choice when it comes to mirroring than less dominant people. A boss that wants to build rapport with his employee can acceptably let his guard down and mirror his actions. This can be particularly handy when the goal is to welcome a new worker whom is particularly tense or nervous. The boss should still refrain from picking up nervous cues, but he should feel welcome to mirror any other gesture. Therefore, when considering the use of mirroring, it is important to note the relative status in the hierarchy. The rule of thumb is that the most dominant individual calls the shots in mirroring, and so long as gestures aren’t dominant displays, others should feel free to follow to successfully build rapport.

What To Mirror To Gain Favours

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When people's bodies are out of sink, the differences of opinion are amplified.

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.
[D] Keeping the legs uncrossed.
[E] Gesturing with the hands similarly.
[F] Drinking in unison or holding drinks with the same hand.
[G] Placing both hands, or just one hand, on the hips.
[H] Leaning in, or leaning out.