Neuroscience part 2: Is there any evidence that NLP works? Scientist and NLP practitioner Trish Riddell believes there is
As a scientist and practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), I often find myself balancing partially conflicting metaphors in my approach to NLP. I have seen for myself the power of some of the techniques for developing rapport and creating change, crucial skills in coaching, but the empirical evidence is often lacking.
However, there is research which addresses issues that bear on NLP concepts. Rapport is one of them.
In a two-part study by Molly Ireland and colleagues at the University of Texas in 2011, language style matching (LSM) was used to identify couples who might be romantically interested in one another.
In the first part, participants (undergraduates) were videoed at a speed dating event.
The conversations of 40 couples were transcribed, and the degree to which the couples matched on use of function words (the, of, he, you, etc), rather than content words (football, opera) was calculated.
The study showed that this match predicted the degree to which couples would be mutually interested in meeting again over and above their perceived similarity with their partner or the number of words spoken during the four minutes.
In the second part of the study, instant message text between couples who met again was analysed. Again, the match between function words was found to predict how likely the couples were to be together three months later.
One technique to create greater rapport that is taught in NLP is to match language patterns with people. This study provides the first evidence in support of this technique since it suggests that we attend to aspects of language on a subconscious level when listening to people, and that we use this information when deciding whether or not we like a person.
Another technique that NLP suggests is useful for creating rapport is to match body language with others. Research has shown that when participants are in a room with an experimenter who matches their body language, the experimenter is rated as more likeable than when body language is not matched (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Thus, there are times when matching body language is useful in creating greater rapport.
However, this was not the case when the researcher asked people to rate whether they would employ someone who matched or did not match their body language. Here, the person who did not match the body language was deemed more employable (Kavanagh et al, 2011).
Similarly, when people were primed to think about money, they liked someone who mimicked them less than people who were not primed (Liu, Vohs and Smeesters, 2011). When we think more individually, we are less likely to want to be matched than when we think collectively. Clearly, the context in which we use body language matching is important – do we want our coaching clients to like us more, or to feel individual from us?
Metaprogrammes
Another aspect of NLP that has been studied is metaprogrammes. These are filters through which we perceive the world. Since each of us uses different filters, our perceptions of the world are different. Knowing which filters you use, and observing the filters that others use, is thought to be useful in creating better communication with others.
One that has received considerable attention is associated and dissociated perspectives. People that are associated, live life in the moment and feel emotions intensely. By contrast, people that are dissociated tend to observe events in their life, and are less emotionally involved. This has been used to determine whether emotional intensity is reduced when we consider events from a first-person (associated) compared to a third-person (dissociated) perspective.
Evidence for a reduction in emotional response when dissociating from the event has been found for sad events (Wisco and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010), and angry events (Ayduk and Kross, 2009). This has been shown to work both for distancing by imagining a physical distance between the person and the event, and for distance in time – imagining an event from 10 years in the future.
Another filter used in metaprogrammes is similarities versus differences. You can easily determine whether someone looks for similarities or differences by giving them two similar objects (for instance, two coffee mugs, or two pens). When people are asked to describe the two objects, some people will describe how the two objects are similar to each other while others will concentrate on the differences between them.
This filter can change the way we look at the world. Andrew Todd et al at the University of Cologne (2011) investigated whether people who consider differences to be important and those who consider similarities to be important show differences in their ability to take another’s perspective.
In Todd’s study, participants were given two pictures, and asked for three similarities (primed for similarity) or three differences (primed for differences).
In two experiments, participants primed for differences were found to be better able to take another’s perspective than those primed for similarity. This effect was found to be stronger when taking the perspective of an out-group than an in-group member.
To demonstrate, participants were asked to complete a task in pairs composed either of two in-group members or an in-group and an out-group member. Mixed pairs performed better than in-group pairs, after being primed to notice differences.
I love this study because not only does it demonstrate the NLP metaprogramme of similarities and differences in a real-life context, but also shows that you don’t have to see the world through only one filter. There is more than one approach to a problem, and people have a natural tendency to use one or the other. Where the greatest value lies is in being flexible about which approach you use, and to consider circumstances in which each would be most appropriate.
When coaching, it is important to be able to take another person’s perspective. In this context, you might be better at seeing things from their perspective if you think about the differences between you. If, by comparison, you have a coaching client that is very much like you, it might be better to think of the similarities between when thinking about events from their perspective. One size does not fit all, and recent research into aspects of NLP suggests ways in which changing our metaprogrammes can help us to be better coaches.
References
O Ayduk and E Kross, ‘Asking ‘why’ from a distance facilitates emotional processing: A reanalysis of Wimalaweera and Moulds (2008)’, in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 47(1), pp88-92, 2009
T L Chartrand and J A Bargh, ‘The chameleon effect: the perception-behavior link and social interaction’, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), pp893-910, 1999
M E Ireland, R B Slatcher, P W Eastwick, L E Scissors, E J Finkel and J W Pennebaker, ‘Language style matching predicts relationship initiation and stability’, in Psychological Science, 22(1), pp9-44, 2011
L C Kavanagh, C L Suhler, P S Churchland and P Winkielman, ‘When it’s an error to mirror’, in Psychological Science, 22(10), pp1274-1276, 2011
J Liu, K D Vohs and D Smeesters, ‘Money and mimicry’, in Psychological Science, 22(9), pp1150-1151, 2011
A R Todd, K Hanko, A D Galinsky and T Mussweiler, ‘When focusing on differences leads to similar perspectives’, in Psychological Science, 22(1), pp134-141, 2011
B E Wisco and S Nolen-Hoeksema, ‘Interpretation bias and depressive symptoms: The role of self-relevance’, in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48(11), pp1113-1122, 2010
Coaching at Work, Volume 7, Issue 5