Something I admired as a teenager was the sensation of hormones building up along with my personality and this paradoxical urge to rebel and do the opposite of what was expected from me (not much has changed) yet conform at the same time…the solution many used was rebelling against their parents so they could become individuals…who ended up copying each other and conformed to what was expected as being “cool” and what wasn’t.That’s what ‘Mirroring’ is, unconsciously mimicking the actions (from clothes to slang used and in this case Body Language) of people we feel a connection with as a form of bonding and acceptance.
Take yawning for instance, many of you are aware that yawning is a contagious effect where the mere sight of seeing someone open their mouth can cause you to yawn as well, initially thought to be a form of oxygenating the body…but it has also been proven to be a hardwired primitive mirroring technique.Try yawning in a crowded place while someone is watching you to test for yourself.
People who are sharing the same emotions or thoughts will start building a rapport through body language and expressions, this mirroring behavior is believed to start early on in our lives as when we are in 
the womb, our heartbeats will synchronize with our mothers speed.Haven’t you noticed when someone has something on their face, coming out of their nose or teeth the person talking to them will start cleaning their own face, touching their nose or passing their tongue through their teeth? How about a couple who go out to eat and at the restaurant one of them will ask the other “What are you going to have?” to end up ordering the same and unconsciously “connecting” through our food…because that’s 
basically what mirroring is all about, making the other person unconsciously feel comfortable around you without being able to explain why…when in fact what is happening is our subconscious detects those small copying gestures and thinks “Mmm, this person must think and feel exactly like me and I feel comfortable around them because we are both acting the same way and doing the same thing so it doesn’t make me stand out and feel different like I do with other people“.This is why autistic sufferers are so socially isolated, because their brains cannot detect and mimic their peers gestures.
One of the simplest psychological experiments you can do to prove this is…take a picture of yourself with your camera and then take another picture of yourself in the mirror, odd’s are you will find the mirror reflection picture more appealing and “natural” because it is the way you are use to seeing yourself everyday.
Look Alikes
Every now and again you will come across an elderly couple that look scarily alike, their body language, expressions even their clothes will resemble each other.When two people think alike and get along, after a certain amount of time of living together they will start looking very similar because they are constantly mimicking the other persons body language and expressions which creates muscle definitions in those facial areas.
This also applies to pets, one thing I’ve learned is you can tell a lot about people by the pets they choose to adopt, people who like cats for example tend to either love “cuteness”, have very relaxed personalities or contrarily…are emotionally unbalanced and have very complex inner personalities (hence the frightening amount of crazy people with dozens of cats) and cats with their graceful and calm 
attitudes for them seem to be enviably at peace with themselves, dog lovers on the other hand tend to be more outdoorsy people, value loyalty and discipline…I sometimes like asking people what type of dog they’d get because it reflects their own attitude and how they feel inside.When choosing a pet we commonly pick one that resembles us physically or that represents out attitude.
Next time you go to a social gathering, take a brief glimpse and the social interactions of others…you will notice that two or more people who are in a conversation that are in agreement will have the same exact posture and body language as the other/s, also watch out for who is the one to change their posture first and watch the other/s imitate them once more, the initiator is usually the dominant person of the group or the one with the highest status.
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