Men in the mirror: Trump and Xi’s suits put ‘chameleon effect’ to test in Beijing

When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met for a welcome ceremony in Tiananmen Square this week with the world’s gaze on them, they mirrored one another in strikingly similar suits.

Both were blue, single-breasted with flap pockets. Both had two buttons with only the top one done up. Both wore red ties.

They were surrounded by scores of other men in different suits: Stephen Miller had his customary pocket square, ditto Pete Hegseth, who along with Scott Bessent wore flamboyantly stripy ties; Elon Musk wore a green tie; there were blue shirts and black suits. Making their symmetry more visually striking.

(Front L-R) White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, trade representative Jamieson Greer, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, secretary of state Marco Rubio and ambassador to China David Perdue. Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook are in the row behind. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Both leaders were hoping to secure geopolitical gains and trade deals – and matching suits, according to Enda Young, the founder and CEO of the Centre for Negotiation and Leadership and a negotiation lecturer at Oxford University, may have helped. “There’s good evidence from social psychology that people tend to warm more quickly to those who seem similar to them,” he says. “That can be behaviour, language, posture or even appearance and dress.”

In negotiation, he says, “mirroring often works at a subconscious level. Similar suits, colours or body language can signal alignment, shared status or mutual respect before anyone speaks.”

Young points to research on the “chameleon effect”, which “also shows that subtle mimicry tends to increase rapport and cooperation”, also citing the work of Robert Cialdini, the author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and “his principle of ‘liking’ where similarity tends to increase trust and openness to influence”.

It’s not the first time political leaders have mirrored each other in high-stakes moments. When France’s Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spent three days in 2024 in the Amazon rainforest talking about ecological preservation and a global minimum tax rate for the world’s wealthiest, (and hand-holding).