Human movement occurs in space and time. Nonverbal communication research has shown that rapport is established both spatially and temporally. Both facets are so ubiquitous as to escape our attention, yet they are nevertheless profound – the very bedrock on which congenial human interaction is based.
The arrangement of body parts in space – the way in which an individual poses and positions himself – holds clues to rapport. Symmetry is critical. Researchers have found that when two people sit in identical positions or as mirror images of each other’s pose, this shared posture indicates that they share a point of view. When this phenomenon of posture matching is not simultaneous but sequential, it is called echoing. Echoing another’s posture has also been found to be a way to promote rapport.
Keeping together in time is also essential for satisfying interaction. Synchrony was discovered by William Condon through painstaking analysis of films in slow motion. He found that when individuals converse, not only does the speaker synchronize his/her movements with speech, but also the listener moves in time with the speech of the speaker. There will not be an exact mirroring of gestures. For example, the speaker’s head may tilt and exactly as it does so, the listener will lift one hand. “Entrainment” is the term Condon coined for the process that occurs when two or more people become engaged in each other’s rhythms.
Mirroring, echoing, and entrainment are naturally occurring phenomenon noted when movement is taken seriously as an essential aspect of social behavior. And this has profound implications for dance. Find out more in the next blogs.