People are more likely to mimic how other people talk if their views on social issues align, new research shows.
“Few people are aware that they alter their word pronunciation, speech rate, and even the structure of their sentences during conversation,” says Florian Jaeger, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and coauthor of the study recently published in Language Variation and Change. “What we have found is that the degree to which speakers align is socially mediated.”
To test the social effects of how greatly we mimic each other’s speech patterns, the researchers devised an experiment in which participants first listened to ideologically charged messages with a set sentence structure. After listening to the diatribes, they were asked to describe some simple illustrations showing characters performing simple actions, such as a waitress giving a banana to a monk.
Most participants subconsciously aligned their descriptions with the sentence structure presented in the listening phase of the experiment. But, how closely the participants aligned with the speaker varied based on how much they agreed with the speaker’s views (as assessed in a post-experimental interview).
Those who shared views with the speaker altered their speech to more closely match the sentence pattern used by the speaker.
“Our social judgments about others and our general attitude toward conflict are affecting even the most automatic and subconscious aspects of how we express ourselves with language,” says Kodi Weatherholtz, a postdoctoral researcher in Jaeger’s lab and lead author of the study.
Agree Or Disagree?
During the experiment, participants heard phrases like “Congress is giving too much money to welfare moochers.” Others heard the same ideologically loaded sentiment expressed with a different sentence structure: “Congress is giving welfare moochers too much money.” (Notice the order of the phrases “too much money”—which refers to the thing being given—and “welfare moochers”—the recipient.)
