Recently, van Baaren and colleagues demonstrated a spectacular advantage of the strategic use of imitation. Inspired by the results of Chartrand and Bargh (1999), they conducted a field experiment in a restaurant. They first established the average tip that waitresses received during a normal evening. They then instructed waitresses to imitate the verbal behavior of customers. That is, they were instructed to literally repeat the order of each customer. In the no-mimicry condition, they were instructed to avoid literal imitation, but paraphrase instead. In two separate studies, it was shown that exact verbal mimicry significantly increased the tips, whereas avoidance of mimicry reduced tips compared to baseline.
Note: This post is part of my TAG series - Tangential, Associative Germane. As part of my TAG series I hope to use short sound bites to reinforce the concepts of previous posts. The post this TAG refers to is Winning Friends - Imitation is the Greatest Form of Flattery.
 Ap Dijksterhuis & Pamela Smith, et al., The Unconscious Consumer: Effects ofEnvironment on Consumer Behavior, 2005, 196.