We don't mirror them. We do the opposite of them.
So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom, and what do I notice? I notice that MBA students really exhibit the full range of power nonverbals.
So you have people who are like caricatures of alphas, really coming into the room, they get right into the middle of the room before class even starts, like they really want to occupy space.
When they sit down, they're sort of spread out.
They raise their hands like this.
You have other people who are virtually collapsing when they come in.
As soon they come in, you see it.
You see it on their faces and their bodies, and they sit in their chair and they make themselves tiny, and they go like this when they raise their hand.
I notice a couple of things about this. One, you're not going to be surprised. It seems to be related to gender. So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men. Women feel chronically less powerful than men, so this is not surprising.
But the other thing I noticed is that it also seemed to be related to the extent to which the students were participating, and how well they were participating. And this is really important in the MBA classroom, because participation counts for half the grade.