Empathetic Regression, Associative Regression, Revertigo, Mirroring, Parroting. So many names, so many uses!

.     The relevance of Empathetic Regression or what a TV show has recently dubbed Revertigo, is this: consciously and unconsciously many people use this type of communication daily in an effort to achieve favourable responses from others. The phenomena involves an apparent regression type of mirroring of traits, habits, other body language, and/or other communication skills.
.     Some psychoanalysts have studied how behaviour changes to "mirror" others they want desirable responses from, others have studied how in stressful and other situations people sometimes revert to an earlier stage of ego or personality as a coping mechanism. It therefore follows, and is no surprise that the behaviour also occurs as a positive response to pleasant experiences the likes of reuniting with an old friend.
.     Empathy is the tendency of people to "feel for" someone they care about. It is well studied and well-established that empathy is real. It is defined as the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts or attitudes of another. Moreover when one mirrors or on some level expresses the thoughts and attitudes of another they are expressing empathy. When these thoughts or attitudes are more explicitly defined as mannerisms that were the embodiment of a previous ego (younger personality) then this empathy has a regression or regressive quality to it.
.     Both empathy and regression are well studied concepts. Feel free to delve into your own research. How association impacts these two phenomena is an interesting theory to explore. When two people share knowledge and experiences, they sometimes freely associate towards the same ends. An example that comes to mind is a classroom and the nitrogen and rose experiment. When it comes time to take the test there may be many varying answers given say on an essay question but the rose has been associated with the knowledge and may be mentioned in more than one essay.
.     The study of associative regression, that is two people who at one point associated freely through several experiences and since have changed (therefore a reversion would be considered regressive) is in it's infantile stages but there are psychological principles worth being explored in the behavioural phenomena. As for me, I find it cute that when one does research on mirroring or on regression or on associtive regression, the results that immediately come up are related to a major media exposure where humor is gleaned from examples of the phenomena.
.     The positive effects of understanding revertigo and it's cousin: mirroring or parroting, is that comfort, non-threat, at-ease impression that interviewers, bosses and clients alike all rely on as their gut feeling as to whether or not this is a "good person". If you see someone at the interview get involved in a Revertigo with the hiring manager, you feel demoralized. Similarly if the interviewer starts to do so with you, you can feel at least partially assured that you've got some sort of leg-up over the competition. Do a bit of research on mirroring or parroting a lot of interpersonal, and therefore job-related stuff can be found and it's quite interesting. Stuff like this.