Question: What do you mean by 'social' experiments?

Phillip Wilkinson answered on 11 Mar 2013:

Perhaps social experiments isn’t the best way to describe it but I am fascinated by body language and other subtle forms of communication. Now body language and voice inflection (the pitch, volume of the voice) is a way better indicator of what is actually being said. So for example: Someone saying ‘Yes’ whilst nodding their head will have a different meaning than saying ‘Yes’ and folding your arms and averting your gaze.

These little social cues are fun to be aware of, because we mostly ignore them on any conscious level.

So what I like to do is called body mirroring. If you stand in the exact same way as someone else, you mirror their body language. Posture, position of head and hands etc. Then you build ‘rapport’ through the brains mirror neurons. Now after a few minutes of this you can take the lead so to speak. If you moved to scratch your nose, they will do a similar movement. Same with nodding your head or crossing your legs.

Its also fun to just observe these things. If you see two people talking, just by looking at their body language you can tell if they are agreement or disagreement. If one of them likes the other one etc.

Hope this clarifies what I meant. I don’t do it all the time, mostly just when I’m bored. 😀