The "chameleon effect"... Why do couples look alike after a period of time?!

It starts with getting to know a person with whom you get along a lot, you spend a lot of time together, and he becomes one of your close friends. You notice or comment around you how you have become repeating some of the words he repeats in his speech, and how you sometimes copy his smile and perhaps his way of speaking. Did you notice at the beginning of your acquaintance how he repeats So much the word "totally", and today you notice that you use it in your speech too?

You are not alone here, as similarities always appear between friends or spouses, so that there is a popular proverb that goes around the world in different forms that says that the husband and wife become, after a while, similar, even in the formal features, but that is not true, because your face will not adjust anatomically with time , but there is something else important that gives this impression.

Here the tradition began

Mimicry and imitation were the way we learned movement and speech since childhood. We always had to observe the actions and expressions of others to know what socially acceptable behavior was. This was the way for the human race to survive and evolve.

Observing and emulating the stronger and more intelligent individuals in society and those of higher social status. (1)

This is how tradition contributed to the development of human societies and helping people to relate to each other, and we have that need to follow - in some way - the standards imposed on us by the people around us, to automatically match our actions with their actions, it is the beginning of our learning of everything;

Walking, talking, language, music, but what about those little verbs and words that unintentionally enter our vocabulary?

(2)

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About two decades ago, the sociologist "John A. Bargh", jointly with social psychologist Tanya Chartrand, published a scientific paper in the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology", on what is known as the "chameleon effect" or The unconscious tendency to imitate the behavior of others, in a way that unintentionally changes an individual's behavior to match the behavior of those around him in the social environment.

The two researchers conducted three experiments to monitor the mechanism by which the chameleon effect works. In the first experiment, the participants described their impression of some images, while the researcher was deliberately making some movements to monitor its effect on the participants in the experiment, so he sometimes smiled, shook his feet, or rubbed his face, and most of them were Participants tend to imitate it unconsciously, and they don't even notice it when asked about it.

In the second experiment, the researchers wanted to identify the effect of imitating others on us. The participants were divided into two groups and each group included a number of actors. The actors in the first group imitated the movements and gestures of the participants, and the actors in the second group adhered to neutral behaviors. It was found that the participants who were imitated by the actors were more inclined to Saying that the interaction was smoother, and they had friendly feelings towards their interlocutors, unlike the other group in which the actors were neutral.

The fact that this reveals to us is that we may involuntarily lean towards those who resemble or imitate us.

However, the most important question remains: Why do we tend to imitate certain people and not others?

In the third experiment, the team pre-determined the degree of sympathy among individuals, to show that an increase in the degree of sympathy increased the likelihood that they would imitate the behaviors of partners. more likely to imitate them.

The researchers also indicate that the mere awareness of another person's behavior automatically increases the likelihood of the individual engaging in this behavior, so this effect appears when we coexist and interact with a group of individuals for a sufficient period.

What is positive about the chameleon effect

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The "chameleon effect" imparts a positive effect on human social interactions, helping us to bond with those we love even without our awareness. Social Psychology", includes the "chameleon effect" gestures, facial expressions, hand movements, foot tremors, yawning, speech patterns and some behaviors. (3)

And the "chameleon effect" appears in many aspects of our behavior, as one session turns over as soon as someone looks at his phone, and almost half of those sitting around him begin to touch their phones.

In a study published by the "Journal of Ethology" in 2021, researchers followed about two hundred men and women in different situations in parks, restaurants, public transportation, waiting rooms, and dinner parties, and studied the extent to which they were affected by the presence of an individual looking at his phone, so that the researchers found that About 50% of people look at their phone within 30 seconds of someone picking up their phone.

The simulation behavior - as the researchers explained - was fast, automatic and subconscious, and the response was close in the different groups on which the experiment was conducted. It's just the "chameleon effect".

(4)

Research reveals, then, that imitation is part of our desire to increase affiliation and communication with others, but there is another explanation that is no less important, which is that when we stick to certain people for a long time, we begin to be involuntarily affected by their actions and words, so that their expressions come back to our minds and we find them closest when searching. For a similar meaning, we repeat the words we have always heard from them, and in general this mirroring of the actions of others means that the interlocutors enjoy their communication, and that there is a certain level of agreement between them.

(5)

Are the faces similar too?

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Expressions and words make us look alike more than we expect, even extending to talking about the similarity of the features of couples sometimes after a long period of marriage, which has aroused the interest of psychologists for years.

In 1987, the magazine "Motivation and Emotion" published a study looking at whether couples were physically similar in their facial features after a long period of marriage, and by comparing photos of a group of couples at the beginning of their marriage and then 25 years later, it revealed The results show that there is indeed an increase in the similarity that appeared after years of coexistence. More than that, the increase in the similarity between the spouses was associated with an increase in marital happiness rates, according to the assurances of these couples.

However, some explanations for this phenomenon referred to in the study is the theory of emotional impact, which states that similar emotional expressions, and the repeated use of facial muscles in the same form, may always affect features, and so when two people live together for a long period of time, and given their exposure to the same experiences and sharing most of them. Their facial features are relatively similar, only with long-term social contact.

The study also partly attributes this similarity to the fact that couples coexist for long periods, and that they often follow the same diet and share the same habits, lifestyle and all its events. (6)

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However, these results were not without doubts.

Decades later, researchers at Stanford University in the United States used technology to research the matter. They collected about five hundred pictures of couples at the beginning of their marriage, in the twenties, and then collected pictures of them in the sixties to analyze the similarity. The researchers showed a picture of a person and in return a picture of the husband with several pictures. In another, volunteers were asked to identify the faces most similar to this person, and the experiment was conducted later using the latest facial recognition software.

The results were different, as the study published by Scientific Reports in 2020 indicated that there is no scientific evidence that couples are similar over time, there are many of them who are already similar, but one of the justifications for this is that these individuals chose more from the beginning People are similar to them (7), and perhaps the similarity of expressions, gestures, and some reactions is what suggests the existence of that similarity.

biological basis

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Some research points to a biological reason why we tend to imitate those around us.

We have a type of neuron called "mirror neuron" that responds equally when we do an action and when we see others doing the same action, and these neurons explain our feeling of empathy for others, which prompts us to imitate them, and also allow us to learn through imitation.

Through it, we discover languages, musical instruments, skills and other movements only by observing others, and our degree of empathy with others deepens, and it is this empathy that subconsciously inspires us to imitate those around us. (8)

Linguists have another explanation for what is happening, called "linguistic convergence", which is what happens when you watch a series speaking in a dialect other than yours, and you find yourself tending to imitate it and introduce some of its words into your speech over time.

The truth is that we usually tend to speak in the dialect that we live with for a period of time, so we use some words or sentence structures or imitate the method of pronunciation, which also happens when you talk to a child and try to imitate his way of speaking.

We are influenced by those we talk to so that we often reuse the terms they use, it makes us spend less effort in searching for the right word, we just heard it, and the use of the same terms plays a role in good communication with our interlocutors.

(9) It seems natural, then, how you subconsciously change to become more like one of your close friends or family members. There is no need here to worry about the distinction of your personality, you are still distinguished, and your imitation of some of the gestures and expressions of others does not erase the traits that make you unique either, it is only one Reflections of social empathy with your surroundings.

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