I had written earlier about what happens when you are travelling particularly by train in India. Since the seats are facing each other, your eyes will invariably connect with the passengers sitting opposite to you. 99.9% of the times the person sitting opposite to you will not be known to you. But if you smile at the person when your eyes connect with the other person even though both of you are only catching a casual glance with your eyes almost on all occasions the person opposite to you will also smile back at you.
Another similar experience that we human beings use naturally to connect with another person is laughter. And this laughter needn’t be the laughter that we have when someone cracks a joke etc. If you start observing closely and as confirmed by several studies almost 80% of the laughter that happens during a conversation is that person’s effort to make a connect with you.
We all consciously listen to and respond to conversations when we are trying to make a connect with a person. In case the conversation is with someone important or if the meeting is very important everyone tries to go out of the way to talk and impress. But like the laughter and smile quoted above and other multiple nonverbal expressions like gasps and sighs etc. which are also meant for the same purpose. Coming back to the laughter example when we laugh or smile, we are showing the other person that we are interested in connecting and the other person also laughs back. What is also interesting is that most of these interactions happen subconsciously sometimes without even us being aware about it.
These practices that have been programmed or build into us is often referred to as the matching principle which says that we communicate by aligning our behaviors through the laughs and the smiles till our brains become entrained. This is actually very interesting because what it means is that when we connect with someone our brains and that of the other person are getting connected.
Another interesting factor which has come out in several other research is that if the intensity of the laugh varies between the two people who are trying to connect the changes of a good connect developing between the two over a longer period gets reduced. So, the brain decides whether to connect or ignore not only based on the smile and laugh but also on the intensity of the same. This also means that the other persons brain without even the person being aware of it can make out when we nod and smile just because the other person or discussion being important though we aren’t interested in the conversation.
One of the techniques which has often been suggested for building a good connect known as mirroring about which I had also written about earlier link of which is as below
Using Mirroring to Crack the Toughest of Negotiations… – Rejo Francis
But what we need to keep in mind is that usual mirroring techniques like smiling, laughing or rephrasing what the other person said etc. will only help build a fruitful long term connect if the brain or the sub conscious mind feels and makes out that the intensities also match between the two people.
Over years of evolution our brains have developed its own techniques to identify if the person we are interacting with is a friend or an enemy. What is even more interesting is that our brains have the capability to identify the mood and energy of the person we are seeing with even a glance even when we are probably meeting them for the first time. Mood and energy of the person are used by the brain in the following manner to evaluate the opposite person as it’s not easy to make out and identify if the person is a friend or an enemy just based on verbal and nonverbal cues within a short time.
Based on the energy and mood the person is often segregated into the following types
- High energy and Positive mood – Upbeat, Enthusiastic, Joyful, and Excited
- Low energy and Positive mood – Satisfied, Content, Blissful
- High energy and Negative mood – Angry, Insulted, Outraged
- Low energy and Negative mood – Frustrated, Annoyed, Discouraged.
We would in our everyday lives be noticing several people who have that talent of building a connect with every person that they run into irrespective of their level or age. One of the primary reasons that they can do that is because of the capability that they have built where they can understand the mood and energy level of the other person and mirroring the same to give them a genuine feeling of wanting to connect. The challenge in today’s world is a good part of our communication has shifted to emails and chats.
Emails and chats do not have the capability to bring out all the emotions in a conversation nor does it provide the option for the other person to see and make out the moods and energy level of the other person and hence the need for human beings to adapt their usual skills of analyzing people based on mood and energy which has been inculcated over centuries of adaption…
To continue getting more insights on how our brains decide to connect with one person and to ignore another and such similar topics subscribe to my LinkedIn page, Rejo’s Business Bytes, or my website, rejofrancis.com
