During a conversation, one person may touch their face, shake a foot or shift posture, and the other may make a similar movement shortly afterwards without either noticing. Psychology calls this subtle, unintentional coordination behavioural mimicry. In a classic 1999 experiment, participants spoke with a confederate who repeatedly touched their face or shook a foot. Participants produced more of the corresponding movement. Seeing an action can make a similar action representation easier to activate, while social goals and context help determine whether it is actually performed.
Research has also found that people who are mimicked may evaluate an interaction partner and the conversation more positively, and that people seeking affiliation may mimic more. Mimicry may therefore arise both from convenient perception–action links and from a goal of connecting. The causal direction cannot simply be reversed, however. Synchronous posture is not enough to prove that two people like each other; a shared task, seating arrangement or conversational rhythm may influence both.
Behavioural mimicry in natural interaction must also be distinguished from “automatic imitation” tasks in the laboratory. These typically measure how seeing a matching or mismatching finger movement affects response speed. One study found that scores on such a task did not correlate with the amount of face-to-face mimicry. They should not be treated as the same personal ability. The cautious conclusion is that observed people can exert a small pull on our movements. This average tendency may assist coordination, but it is neither mind-reading nor a dependable button for manufacturing rapport.
Sources: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183784
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