University of Groningen
Unconscious Bonding Rachl, Judith
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Rachl, J. (2018). Unconscious Bonding: Forming Bonds Quickly in Today's Fast-Paced Society. University of Groningen.
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Unconscious bonding happens daily in people’s lives: in one’s private sphere and work environment. People are faced to form bonds quickly, especially in today’s fast moving society. For example, a doctor who is increasingly under pressure to spend less time with a patient and be very efficient in the treatment and medication process. The doctor needs to form a secure bond with the patient in order to convince the patient to follow the treatment plan. This dissertation aimed to shed more light on how such quick bonds can develop, as normal relationship development needs time (Ainsworth, 1989). We investigated especially the role of nonverbal behavioral mimicry as a means to form bonds and whether mimicry meets the demands of today’s fast moving society.
Particularly, we investigated whether mimicry can elicit fast bonding: people experience a click between them and another person when mimicked (Chapter 2); people have a desire for bonding (Chapter 3); people can lose something when they engage in unconscious bonding (Chapter 4); and digital interactions do not fulfill unconscious bonding as good as face-to-face interactions (Chapter 5).
Below, we will begin with summarizing the empirical findings of the chapters. Then, we will elaborate on the theoretical implications and highlight the contribution of the findings for research on (unconscious) bonding. Respectively, we will discuss potential directions for future research and expound the limitations and strengths of the studies. Last, but not least, we will conclude with some practical implications.
Summary of Main Findings
The Magic Click: How Psychological Ease Facilitates Perceptions of Social Clicking
In Chapter 2, we focused on how people can experience an instant connection with another person. We hypothesized that the experience of ease with a stranger leads people to experience a click, namely that they “just hit it off” or “are on the same wavelength” with the person. We postulated that the experience of ease can be evoked by different means: implicit aspects, the situation itself and nonverbal cues. We manipulated ease by (1) priming people with the concept of fluency (implicit aspects), (2) depending on another person (situation) and (3) manipulating nonverbal behavioral mimicry. Indeed, we found
that people experiencing ease reported more clicking compared to people who did not experience ease and that the effect between the experience of ease and clicking was mediated by feelings of belonging. This might suggest that people can form quick bonds and experience belonging with a stranger, which they call clicking. Furthermore, we examined whether the beginning of an interaction is essential for experiencing clicking and whether the experience of clicking depends on maintaining the ease. We additionally performed a meta-analysis to confirm the effects of our findings.
Chapter 2 offers a first suggestion for measuring the concept of clicking. We were inspired by Brafman and Brafman’s (2010) book what might influences clicking, yet nobody postulated how clicking could be investigated. This chapter, therefore, includes a variety of measures, namely that we started by purely asking people directly whether they clicked with another person or not. For reliability and validity reasons, we expanded the measure to more items by searching for common sayings representing the experience of clicking. We also tried to develop a more implicit measure of clicking, which was unfortunately not successful. Altogether, Chapter 2 shows that people can form quick bonds and that the experience of ease plays a crucial role in instant connections.
Mimicry is Smooth: On the Embodiment of Social Smoothness
In Chapter 3, we predicted that people have an underlying motivation to experience bonding or rather a desire to maintain a sense of “smoothness” in one’s thoughts, feelings, and social behaviors. In a series of studies, we tested whether an initial experience of smoothness influences people in their decisions, judgments and behaviors. Indeed, the experience of behavioral smoothness, so being mimicked by an interaction partner, influenced people in choosing a smoother candy bar (over a rough one) and increased ratings of pictures as being smoother, yet less rough. Additionally, we showed that people who are primed with the concept of smoothness engage in more bonding towards an interaction partner in an upcoming conversation.
These findings suggest that people have an underlying motivation to bond with others and that this desired is embodied in people. In other words, people have a desire for smoothness, which can be evoked by interpersonal bonding
factors (e.g., mimicry) or by embodied information as being primed with smooth pictures. This chapter suggests that bonding in form of mimicry is the embodied form of “social smoothness” and that people seem to seek out for physical and psychological smoothness to experience a form of bonding.
The Hidden Costs of Feeling Good: Nonverbal Behavioral Mimicry Fosters Aversion to Making an Effort
In Chapter 4, we focused on the negative side effects unconscious bonding might have on people. We investigated whether being mimicked in an interaction implicitly undermines people’s effort and working behavior. We based the idea on Carver’s (2003) coasting theory which suggests that people who feel positive (i.e. feeling accepted due to being mimicked), reduce their investment of resources. So, people who are mimicked could be so pleased and satisfied that they subsequently engage in coasting feeling that they do not need to invest more resources.
We investigated this idea in three experiments showing that mimicked people (1) take more time for making a decision and (2) become less competent at a basic maze solving task. Additionally, we show that the famous social loafing effect, reducing one’s effort in a group, is more likely to evolve under mimicry. We concluded this chapter with a meta-analysis over the first two studies supporting our notion that the experience of mimicry leads people to reduce their investment of resources. As such a reduction might be evoked by feeling that one invested more resources as necessary, we propose that being mimicked gives people the experience that things are going better than necessary. In other words, people experience bonding and see their bonding need fulfilled why they do not need to invest more resources to feel bonded.
Virtually Satisfied? How Digital Interactions May Leave Us Longing for Belonging
In Chapter 5, we focused on the new demands on (unconscious) bonding, namely that people use more and more digital interactions as substitutes for face-to-face interactions. We investigated whether digital interactions are as good as face-to-face interaction in terms of bonding, namely fulfilling the need to
belong. Social bonding normally takes time to develop and might be particularly at risk in digital interactions. We investigated this idea in a set of three studies with a concluding meta-analysis over the effects of our studies.
The most important contribution of this chapter is that it suggests a difference between digital and face-to-face interactions. Although people use digital interactions as a substitute for face-to-face interactions, our studies show that they lack in fulfilling people’s fundamental need of social belonging. We showed that people hold pessimistic beliefs about digital interactions in fulfilling the need to belong. This might be a reason why people’s responsiveness to social cues in digital interactions is undermined. So, participants who engage in a webcam interaction did indicate less belonging to their interaction partner compared to participants who engage in a face-to-face interaction. Additionally, we showed that people not only feel satisfied in the fulfillment of their belongingness need, but that they also show an increased motivation for restoring closeness to another person in a subsequent interaction when exposed to digital interactions.
Theoretical Implications
The research included in this dissertation centered on unconscious bonding and how (instant) connections can be formed in today’s fast moving society. Our main focus was on investigating whether nonverbal behavioral mimicry enables people to form instant connections and are desirable as well as to test whether unconscious bonding can have negative effects, especially when it comes to today’s technological progress. We integrated our ideas in light of different theories and research on nonverbal behavioral mimicry as well as digital interactions, decision making and group processes. Therefore, this research will not only advance the understanding of unconscious bonding, but, furthermore, may also elucidate to the number of research areas mentioned above. Below, we will highlight the theoretical implications of our research.
Mimicry
The results of this dissertation add to a more elaborate understanding of mimicry. Mimicry is known as an affiliation tool which binds and bonds people together. Yet, we showed with our studies that mimicry also carries embodied
information as suggested by Winkielmann and colleagues (2015), namely that mimicry is a form of embodiment as it is moderated in the same way by contextual information as embodiment is. Former research has already disclosed that contextual information is important to unfold the positivity of mimicry. For example, people who are mimicked by an out-group member actually feel colder compared to people who are mimicked by an in-group member (Leander, Chartrand, & Bargh, 2012). Our research is in line with these findings showing that mimicry triggers feelings of embodied information like warmth or smoothness.
Secondly, we provide a clearer understanding how mimicry can be used as a means to affiliate with strangers, namely that they form an instant connection with them and feel a form of belonging towards them. Belongingness seems to need time to develop (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), yet with our set of studies we showed that people can experience belonging with a stranger with the only requirement that the interaction partner has to ease the situation. Indeed, research has shown that mimicry can reduce the demands on one’s psychological resources, which suggest that mimicry is a way to ease the situation (Dalton, Chartrand, & Finkel, 2010; Finkel, Campell, Brunell, Dalton, Scarbeck, & Chartrand, 2006). Such ease, however, is normally experienced with close others why people might not refer to it as belonging, but rather as clicking to express their surprised and magical feeling.
A third implication is the negative side effects unconscious bonding in form of mimicry might have. Carver’s (2003) coasting theory suggest that people who feel positive and good reduce their investment of resources as they have the feeling they invested more than necessary. Mimicry, if displayed in the right context, is a way for people to feel positive and liked and it might also lead to a reduced investment of resources (for a review see Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). Indeed, we showed that people reduce their investment of resources when they engage in unconscious bonding. These findings not only support Carver’s theory empirically, we also demonstrate that mimicry can have negative consequences for people. Additionally, we add to the decision making literature by showing that interpersonal factors can influence one’s decision making process.
We conclude these theoretical implications on mimicry by offering a better understanding how nonverbal cues or rather unconscious bonding may function
in today’s technological age. As digital interactions are more and more used as a substitute in today’s society, we asked the question whether these digital interactions can meet the requirements for unconscious bonding. Unconscious bonding in its features depends on contextual information and might be very sensitive (Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). Yet, if people cannot gain the same of digital interactions compared to face-to-face interactions, it might leave them with an unsatisfied need. The consequences might be in line with findings on mimicry and coldness, namely that people who expect mimicry in certain situation, yet do not experience it, feel cold (Leander, Chartrand, & Bargh, 2012). It might be that people who aim to experience bonding throughout digital interactions might be disappointed due to the reduced responsiveness to nonverbal cues.
Digital Interactions
Another important implication for today’s bonding is the fact that people seem to lose the capability of bonding so that they feel included. We base this assumption on the fact that the feeling of loneliness is increasing over the last years. For example, in Germany in 1993, half of the population indicated that they never feel lonely (Harris Interactive, 2015). Yet, in 2014 only 30% indicated that they never experienced loneliness. In another study carried out in Great Britain, it was showed that loneliness was associated with lower physical health especially in young adults (Victor & Yang, 2012). So loneliness seems to be an increasing burden of today’s society leaving the question whether this comes from the fact that people unlearned how to bond with others or whether the new technologies make it harder for people to bond.
Another interesting implication might be the fact that today’s technological development is ahead of social evolutionary development. In other words, the evolutionary development of today’s society is outdated, meaning that the way people form bonds is not fitting with the demands of today’s technological world. Indeed, evolution medics already suggest that society is not made for living in the 21st century (Schorsch, 2011). This fact might also apply to the social psychological side, namely that from an evolutionary point people lag behind and do not adapt as fast as they should to be abreast with the technological development.
Further Directions and Future Research
With this dissertation we aimed to highlight the importance of unconscious bonding and add to the understanding of the positive and negative effects of it. We identified core aspects bonding behavior can influence or can be influenced by, yet we acknowledge that we disregarded other important aspects of unconscious bonding as (1) intercultural context, (2) attraction, (3) time course, or (4) touch. Culture plays an important role when it comes to communications and negotiations (Gudykunst, 2003). For example, a business meeting in Germany proceeds totally different compared to China or Russia. In Germany, it is expected to quickly discuss the topic of the meeting (e.g., signing a contract); not so in China or Russia, where most negotiations start with small talk and meals as well as consumptions of vodka (Seelmann-Holzmann, 2016; Hamann, 2013). This fact might also influence the way unconscious bonding occurs, as in certain culture the way how people approach each other might be different (e.g., due to hierarchy). Indeed, research has shown that hierarchy has an impact in a negotiation setting (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003) and research on different ethnicity has shown that mimicry can lead to negative performance, when the different ethnicity is present (Chartrand & Lakin, 2013). We encourage future research to replicate our findings in a different cultural background as well as in intercultural settings. This research could identify how unconscious bonding occurs in different cultures and also how people should react in an intercultural setting.
Second, our research is limited to non-romantic situations disregarding other aspects as attraction. Attraction, however, may play an important role when it comes down to romantic relationships and the development of them (Berscheid & Reis, 1998). Especially in our chapter on instant connections, we only researched same sex pairs, avoiding the impact of sexual attraction. Therefore, we can only conclude that such a clicking experience can happen between same sex pairs, yet it is not clear how such an instant connection can develop between heterogeneous pairs. We propose that heterogeneous pairs can become friends and that such instant connection can happen between them without ending in a romantic relationship. However, it is questionable whether, if attraction plays a role in heterogeneous pairs, one can experience clicking but not a sexual attraction to the interaction partner. Future research is encouraged to differentiate between a “pure” clicking experience in heterogeneous pairs and clicking experiences including sexual attraction.
Third, our research rises the question how a relationship develops out of unconscious bonding or rather an instant connection. Is unconscious bonding the start of a relationship? What if the first encounter was very negative and unconscious bonding did not happen? Would that mean no relationship can develop? Is an instant connection the pre-requirement for the development of a relationship? Although, research has already pointed out how important secure bonding is (e.g., attachment styles; Ainsworth, 1989), research still lacks a full understanding on how important bonding is for the trajectory of bonding. A study has shown that the bonding experience one has with parents or significant others influence the way how this person forms bond with others (e.g., Feeney & Noller, 1990). Yet, these findings do not explain whether someone needs to experience a click with this person so that the relationship can develop. Additionally, it might be even more complicated when accounting for new technological devices. Although it seems that unconscious bonding is not as good in digital interactions as in face-to-face interactions, research still shows that couples who met online are less likely to divorce (Cacioppo, Cacioppo, Gonzaga, Ogburn, & VanderWeele, 2013). Future research can investigate how unconscious bonding impacts the development of relationships and how this unconscious bonding takes place in a digital environment.
We conclude this section of future direction by considering the importance of touch in forming unconscious bonding. All our studies disregarded touch as a bonding mechanism between the interaction partners. Yet, studies on touch and bonding showed that it is essential for a positive relationship (Klaus, Jerauld, Kreger, McAlpine, Steffa, & Kennell, 1972). It might be that touch adds another dimension to the concept of unconscious bonding, namely that touching leads people to experience empathy and understanding. Indeed, a study showed that touch by a digital avatar has an empathic and comforting meaning for the interaction (Bickmore, Fernando, Ring, & Schulman, 2010). Yet, touch is hardly used in the majority of digital interactions why one can postulate that the difference in experiencing belongingness in face-to-face versus digital interactions could be caused by the inability of touching the other person. Although our participants did not touch each other in face-to-face interactions, they still had the possibility to do so. Future research is encouraged to investigate whether the possibility of touch influences people’s bonding perception and fulfillment of the need to belong.
Limitations and Strengths
This dissertation sought to empirically investigate how unconscious bonding influences the formation of unconscious bonding and the negative side effects it might have. We have done so in four chapters, comprising a total of 13 studies. Below, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these studies in terms of method, manipulations and measurement as well as in light of the newest developments in psychological research, namely, replicability of priming effects and small sample sizes.
Method
Over the four chapters, we employed a variety of different methodologies including laboratory experiments, field studies, online questionnaires and importantly interaction studies. This assortment of different designs is a great benefit for this dissertation. Yet, each research design has its drawbacks and certain methodological criteria suffer. Our laboratory experiments benefit from experimental and systematic control over our independent variables and possible confounders, allowing us to draw causality from our findings (e.g., Spencer, Zanna, & Fong, 2005). However, this controlled environment might raise the question of generalizability of our findings, particularly as the majority of our research participants were students. Yet, research on mimicry on mid-level managers demonstrated the same results of mimicry as with a student population, suggesting that our results are generalizable to the general population (Sanchez-Burks, Bartel, & Blount, 2009). In addition to our laboratory experiments, we complimented the findings by conducting field studies to ensure that our results are robust and show external validity. We, therefore, are confident that the combination of our study designs let us draw causal and generalizable conclusions.
Manipulation
Most studies made use of the well known manipulation of nonverbal behavioral mimicry (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). This means that either a confederate – a bogus participant – or the experimenter engaged in a short interaction (5-10 minutes) with the participants. Chartrand used for these interactions the so called picture description task (see Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). In this task the
participant and the confederate described pictures to each other while seated in a 45-degree angle to each other. Due to this well-known procedure and the fact that our participants were most often psychology students who might have learned about this task in class, we switched to other interaction tasks. While choosing these tasks, we were aware of people’s engagement in and distraction of the task, meaning that the task should not be too easy so that they might be aware of their interaction partner’s nonverbal behavior, but also not too hard that they feel bad or sad about their performance. Having this in mind we came up with the (1) category task, (2) speed interview or structured interview, and (3) word task. We also used the situation in which the experimenter and the participant watched a video together to manipulate mimicry. For the category task, we asked participants to name seven words for a category (e.g., color, pet, fruits). We encouraged participants when they had the feeling they were stuck (“Just think of other fruit you might have eaten”) or unsure about their answer (“Can a snake be a pet?”). We did not record any of the answers (beside we needed the videos to code the mimicking behavior of the participant) as the performance on the task was not to our relevance. For the speed or structured interviews, we came up with question as “Do you have siblings?” or “Do you have a pet?”. Most often these questions were closed or had a few-word answers as “What is your favorite color?”. In the word task, we asked participants to name words with a particular letter. We especially used this procedure when we had to make sure that the length of the interactions was the same, namely that participants had to name words including a K for a certain amount of time (e.g., 2 minutes). This task enabled us to make sure that each interaction sequence had the same length. Importantly, we did not investigate the amount of words people named and encouraged them when they had the feeling that they cannot find more words with a certain letter, pointing out that the letter can be anywhere in the word.
Measurement
Next to self-reported measures, we used a variety of behavioral measures as choosing a candy bar, copying the foot shaking behavior of the experimenter, placing two chairs in a room or crafting Christmas stars. Yet, we particularly tried to develop a more implicit measure of clicking to add more value to the self-reported feelings. Although we managed to withdraw from purely asking them
whether they clicked or not – by using sayings capturing the meaning of clicking (e.g. we are on the same wavelength) – the more implicit measure we tried to develop failed in its validity and reliability. Nevertheless, feelings are a cognitive representation and they represent a mental and bodily experience of change (Scherer, 2005). So, people might have experienced this bodily change and were able to report it in the presented questionnaires.
Priming Effects and Replicability
In our studies, we made use of contextual priming. For example, in Study 2 of Chapter 3, we primed participants subliminally with pictures either representing smooth vs. rough obstacles. Yet, researchers have expressed concerns about the reliability of priming effects and the veracity of “social priming” more generally (e.g., Doyen, Klein, Simons, & Cleeremans, 2014, Kahneman, 2012). Although it is regarded as “a powerful way to ensure automaticity as well as to eliminate possible demand effects on behavior” (Doyen, Klein, Simons, & Cleeremans, 2014, p. 28); the effects are also often small and fleeting. Furthermore, some studies in social psychology show unusually strong effects, even though the effects are not directly replicable (e.g., Pashler, Rohrer, & Harris, 2013; LeBel & Campbell, 2013).
Our use of “social priming” techniques sought to take advantage of its strengths while minimizing limitations often observed with semantic priming effects. For example, one meta-analysis suggests that motivational primes produce small yet robust effects, which suggests they may be more reliable than semantic primes (Weingarten, Chen, McAdams, Yi, Hepler, & Albarracín, 2016). Our theoretical assumptions about the priming techniques were rooted in assumptions that they were motivational in nature.
The present studies also sought to maximize power by conducting vivid, lab-based experiments on location, with behavioral independent and dependent variables, rather than pen-and-paper surveys or Internet-based studies. We assumed this would increase participant engagement as well as the applicability of our research findings. However, as we discuss next, a trade-off for conducting vivid, lab-based experiments is that they are resource intensive and thus sample sizes will be smaller.
Sample Size
Our studies made use of nonverbal behavioral mimicry – an interactional manipulation. These studies are resource intensive, as they require individual testing of participants, often with both an experimenter and a trained confederate in the room. Therefore, the number of participants in each of our studies varied due to variations in availability of resources such as time, personnel, and participants. This is a weakness of our studies, particularly in terms of power and potential stability of our study results. Yet, so far it is impossible to move our studies to a solely digital platform so that we can collect data in a more inexpensive way and, therefore, collecting more participants in the same time period (e.g., Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). Online resources as MTurk or clickworker are a great resource when it comes to measuring intentions and perceptions or opinions (e.g., see Study 1 of Chapter 2).
However, use of online platforms limits the behavioral data that can be collected in an online environment and ultimately, our own studies suggest that digital interactions moderate the experience of belonging in critical ways (see Study 2 of Chapter 5). We are thus concerned with the development of moving vast amounts of social psychological research to online platforms in the pursuit of statistical power. First, it limits the types of research questions that can be asked; second, it requires us to assume that digital contexts are representative of physical interactions. As suggested by the present dissertation, fluent interactions may be difficult to reproduce in an online environment, especially given that an online environment might be perceived differently (see Chapter 5).
Ultimately, research studying the behavior of people (e.g., nonverbal behavioral mimicry), should be more acknowledged by less pressure on sample size, but rather encouraged to replicate their studies (with different measures) and to perform a meta-analysis over all their study results. The key is to be open with regards to limitations of a given study, whether it be artificiality of an online environment, or the small samples used in resource-intensive experiments.
Practical Implications
Our research has practical implications for organizations, project teams, private relationships and technology industry. Unconscious bonding is important
when one has to connect quickly with others never met before. This might especially be a task for today’s fast moving society. For example, constantly changing project teams are very common tasks people have to face in their working environment. Imagine a consultant who has daily changing clients. S/ he needs to be able to form quick bonds with any sort of person (e.g., banker vs. nurse) to be successful. These people can make use of clicking to form instant connections with others. Indeed, our findings suggest that people can influence their interactions with others as has already been shown in studies on relationships formation (e.g. Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). Yet, we showed that people can influence their interaction partners in the very first seconds of the interaction, which in terms might also influence how successful a task or deal might be.
However, people have to be aware how much they engage in unconscious bonding as this can lead people to reduce their effort and coast. Yet, as unconscious bonding is a naturally happening affiliation tool, it can occur as soon as people are close together (Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). People should be aware of this fact and they are able to take action. For example, companies and leaders can influence social loafing by making tasks explicit so that people think that their single performance can be traced and mimicry will lose its spell. Such an intervention might also be possible in schools and university, as it is sometimes hard to identify the single contribution of students in a group task. Teachers can state explicit tasks so that they can trace the individual performance. This fact might also be an advantage for students who normally do most of the work in group tasks and get frustrated by it. It might be interesting to educate students about the fact that unconscious bonding might impact them and that this can be the reason why they do not feel that they like to engage in the group work.
Our research findings might also be important in terms of office design. Purely touching the surface of one’s computer desk or the papers out of the copying machine might influence people and activate the mindset of bonding. This activation can influence people in their forthcoming behaviors and actions and influence the outcome of their working process. For example, a meeting in a room with smooth surfaces, round tables and soft chairs might influence how people interact with each other and the result of the meeting, namely that the interactions are smoother due to people engaging in mimicry. The results and
outcome of the meetings might also be reached earlier, in other words that people need less time to come to a conclusion. Interestingly, most meetings in Finland include visiting a sauna (Schiekiera, 2012). Interestingly, most companies actually have their own sauna and it is not uncommon to continue the discussions there. In such a situation bonding might have a totally different meaning due to the fact that people in the truest sense of the word let the pants down.
Another thing that our results indicate is that digital interactions are not yet a perfect substitute for face-to-face interactions, although they are often used as such. For example, a couple who has a long distance relationship uses digital devices (e.g., Skype) to talk to and see each other. Yet, our research suggests that people do not experience the same fulfillment of their need to belonging in these digital interactions and leaves them with a motivation for the fulfillment of this need. This might mean that people feel particularly negative when hanging up leaving them in a state of loneliness and maybe even a depressed mood. However, loneliness is known to influence the physical health of people (Walker & Beauchene, 1991). Yet, using digital interactions as a substitute for face-to-face interactions might have severe consequences of people’s psychological and physiological health.
The technology industry might profit from our findings of the negative effects of digital interactions in terms of how to improve software and devices for digital interactions. The fact that digital interactions do not lead to the same experiences as face-to-face interactions do, computer scientists should try to improve the quality of digital interactions to make it more attractive for people and a real substitute for face-to-face interactions. For example, technical malfunctions might be in the same way disturbing the conversational flow as other disruptions in conversations do. For example, a study showed that brief silence in groups affect their social needs (Koudenburg, Postmes, & Gordijn, 2011). In other words, it undermines the coordinated movement of an interaction. Technical malfunctions are very likely to also undermine the nonverbal coordination of interaction partners and might, therefore, have a negative influence on one’s fulfillment of the need to belong and unconscious bonding.
Concluding Remarks
We started this dissertation with the quote by Chartrand and colleagues (2008) to illustrate that people prefer to have everything in their own hands and under control. Yet, unconscious bonding impacts our daily life to a great extent and it is mostly automatic and not available to a person’s awareness. We showed that unconscious bonding is particularly useful when forming instant connection with strangers and that people automatically have the desire to stay in unconscious bonding. Yet, we also showed that unconscious bonding has its drawbacks. People who were mimicked reduced their effort and unconscious bonding in digital interactions seems to be impaired, namely that people do not experience the same extend of belongingness as in face-to-face interactions. We hope that our findings will help people to understand how and why they feel a certain way when interacting with others. Although we might never be able to control all of our actions and behaviors, we still know that it has an important life purpose: bonding with others so that we can survive.
