New research finds that tiny, often unconscious facial mimicry predicts people’s preferences. In two experiments, listeners who mirrored speakers’ positive facial expressions—measured with sensitive sensors—were more likely to choose the items the speaker favored, even when only hearing a recorded voice. The effect was modest, observed in female participants, and correlational rather than causal, and prior related studies have had mixed replication. Still, the work suggests nonverbal mirroring can help shape decisions before conscious thought.
Your Face May Reveal What You’ll Like — Before You Even Realize It
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We often mirror the facial expressions of people around us—smiling when they smile, tightening our brows in sync—usually without conscious awareness. This subtle automatic behavior, called facial mimicry, is thought to support empathy and social bonding. New research from Tel Aviv University suggests it may also reveal our preferences before we can explain them in words.
In two laboratory experiments, researchers paired dozens of strangers. In the first, one partner described two films while the other watched the speaker's face and then chose which film they most wanted to see; the pairs then switched roles. In the second experiment, both partners listened to recordings of an actress summarizing the same kinds of films with no visual cues, and afterward each selected a preferred film. The summaries were deliberately comparable so there was no obvious "correct" choice.
Throughout the sessions, sensitive sensors tracked minute facial-muscle activity in the listeners—movements too small to see in a mirror and that occur without conscious sensation. The team analyzed both overall facial changes (for example, how much a listener raised their eyebrows) and how closely the listener's expressions mirrored the speaker's expressions.
Key Findings
The analysis, published in Communications Psychology, found that participants' choices aligned more closely with how much they mimicked the speaker's positive expressions—such as cheek-raising—than with the listeners' own facial activity considered in isolation. Mimicry of negative expressions sometimes trended toward weaker preference for the described item, but those effects were less consistent. Crucially, the same pattern appeared even when listeners only heard recorded voices: people can detect a smile in someone's voice and covertly mirror it.
“The study showed that we are not just listening to a story—we are actually being ‘swept’ toward the speaker,” said co-author Liron Amihai. “This mimicry often happens automatically, and it can predict which option we will prefer long before we think about it in words.”
Limits And Cautions
The authors emphasize that the findings are correlational: the results do not prove mimicry causes preferences, nor that speakers are intentionally influencing listeners. The study has important limitations—participants were all women, the effects were modest, and prior high-profile findings linking posture or facial configuration to emotion and judgment (for example, pen-in-mouth smiling or "power pose" effects) have produced mixed replication results or smaller-than-originally-reported effects.
If these results are replicated more broadly, they suggest our bodies may help guide decisions before our conscious minds fully form them. For now, the research highlights an intriguing route by which subtle, often unnoticed social signals can align our preferences with others'.
Originally reported by Nautilus; study published in Communications Psychology.
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