Our social judgments about others and our general attitude toward conflict are affecting even the most automatic and subconscious aspects of how we express ourselves with language, and people who are better at compromising align more closely, found in a new study recently published in Language Variation and Change.

To test the social effects of how greatly we mimic each other's speech patterns, the researchers devised an experiment in which participants first listened to ideologically charged messages with a set sentence structure. After listening to the diatribes they were asked to describe some simple illustrations showing characters performing simple actions, such as a waitress giving a banana to a monk.

Most participants subconsciously aligned their descriptions with the sentence structure presented in the listening phase of the experiment. But, how closely the participants aligned with the speaker varied based on how much they agreed with the speaker's views (as assessed in a post-experimental interview). Those who shared views with the speaker altered their speech to more closely match the sentence pattern used by the speaker.

One reason people tend to align certain speech patterns is because it facilitates communication, explained Florian Jaeger, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and coauthor of the study. When we align how we talk, then sounds, words, and sentence structures become more predictable, making it easier to understand each other.

In addition to this well-known psychological function, the study's findings provide evidence that speech alignment serves a social function. In short, we tend to like people who share certain characteristics with us. Thus, speaking in a way that is more or less similar to others can be a subtle means of influencing liking, trust, and other interpersonal emotions.

The findings shed new light on the relationship between human psychology and social behavior, Jaeger said.