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Article about what makes people friends
17 psychological tricks to make people like you immediately. Copy link lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers.
Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in . Making friends comes naturally to people most of the time, but it's not always easy. For years researchers have been studying what attracts people to each other, and their findings might improve your friend-making skills. Getting people to like you is surprisingly easy, especially if you follow these 17 science-backed techniques. Most friendships develop so naturally that you don't even realize how or when they started. But sometimes you want to make an effort to befriend a new acquaintance or become a better friend to existing pals. Using tricks and techniques like mirroring, subliminal touching, smiling, and letting that other person talk about themselves can make you appear more likable. We scoured the psychological research on the science of attraction to find strategies to get people to like you. Maggie Zhang contributed to an earlier version of this article. 1. Copy them. This strategy is called mirroring" and it involves subtly mimicking the other person's behavior. When talking to someone, try copying their body language, gestures, and facial expressions. In 1999, New York University researchers documented the "chameleon effect," which occurs when people unconsciously mimic each other's behavior, and that mimicry facilitates liking. Researchers had 78 men and women work on a task with a partner, who was really a confederate working for the researchers. The partners engaged in different levels of mimicry, while researchers secretly videotaped the interactions. At the end of the interaction, the researchers had participants indicate how much they liked those partners. Sure enough, participants were more likely to say that they liked their partner when their partner had mimicked their behavior. 2. Spend more time around them. According to the "mere-exposure effect," people tend to like things that are familiar to them. Knowledge of this phenomenon dates back to the 1950s, when MIT researchers discovered that college students who lived closer together in housing projects were more likely to be friends than students who lived farther apart. This could be because students who live close by can experience more passive, day-to-day interactions with each other, such as greeting each other in the common room or kitchen. Under certain circumstances, those interactions can develop into full-fledged friendships. Psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh had four women pose as students in a university psychology class. Each woman showed up to class a different number of times. When experimenters showed male students pictures of the four women, the men demonstrated a greater affinity for the women they'd seen more often in class — even though they hadn't interacted with any of them. Taken together, these findings suggest that simply spending more time with people can make them like you more. Even if you don't live near your friends, try sticking to a steady routine with them, such as going out for coffee every week or taking a class together. 3. Compliment others. People will associate the adjectives you use to describe other people with your personality. This phenomenon is called "spontaneous trait transference." One study found that this effect occurred even when people knew certain traits didn't describe the people who had talked about them. "Whatever you say about other people influences how people see you," says Gretchen Rubin, the author of "The Happiness Project." If you describe someone else as genuine and kind, people will also associate you with those qualities.
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