The Ultimate Body Language Book

these class of neurons might be related to empathy and emotion since the neurons might help us
connect with others. For example, when we view pictures of people who display happiness, disgust,
fear or pain, we react to them as if we had felt it ourselves. This ability to connect with people, even
strangers, has an important function in our daily lives since it allows us to build and hold relationships,
creates sympathy, and inhibit fighting.
Chapter 1 - Why The Study Of Body Language Is Important
The Benefits Of Subconscious Mirroring
If you haven’t yawned yet, you’re active mind is working hard to suppress it!
The more attention we give to an action during observation, the more likely we are to copy the
behaviour. Take traveling abroad, for example, where a constant exposure to accents eventually sees us
adopting it presumably to fit in better. It’s been shown too, that the more we imitate other people, the
more we tend to like them and presumably the more they like us. It works in reverse as well since the
more we like them the more we imitate them. Mirroring and imitation therefore is a salient
characteristic in our nonverbal communication and shows others that we like and are connecting with
them.
In 2000 Swedish researcher Dr. Ulf Dimberg exposed volunteers to frowning, smiling and
expressionless faces. They were then told to react to them in various ways. When they saw a smiling
face, they were sometimes asked to smile back and other times to frown back. The researchers found
that it was difficult for the subjects to remain expressionless to a face that appeared happy or angry and
even more difficult to smile at sad faces or make sad faces at laughing faces. The theory was advanced
that our unconscious minds exerts much more control over our faces then we think. While it was
somewhat possible to control the subject’s reactions, it required a great deal of mental power to reverse
their natural tendencies. The study showed that even when we could control our emotions, minute
spontaneous twitches still revealed true responses, and in every case, mirroring was the natural