Mimicry

Background

In the 1970s and 1980s, research on mimicry focused on exploring the relationship between behavioral mimicry (i.e., shared motor movements) and rapport between interaction partners. The two were found to be positively correlated. For example, counselors who mimic the postures of their clients are perceived by their clients to be more empathetic, warm, genuine, with more expertise; mothers and babies who share motor movements have more rapport; and classrooms characterized by high teacher–student rapport have more shared movements.

By the 1990s, researchers agreed that mimicry is related to empathy, rapport, and liking. However, because the thrust of the early research was on demonstrating an association between behavioral mimicry and rapport, rather than on demonstrating experimentally that mimicry does occur and the conditions under which it occurs, several questions remained to be explored. One question concerned the ubiquity of mimicry. Does mimicry occur above chance levels in a social interaction? Another question concerned how the effects are produced. Does mimicry lead to rapport or does rapport lead to mimicry? Moreover, early research paid little attention to the fact that most mimicry occurs without conscious intention or awareness. If people's behaviors passively and unintentionally change to match those of others in their social environments, then what are the minimal conditions needed to produce these chameleon effects? Do people mimic strangers or just friends? Do people need to have an active goal to get along with and be liked by the interaction partner?

Several experiments were conducted in the late 1990s to address these questions. In them, participants took turns with another participant (actually a confederate—part of the research team) describing a series of pictures. When the confederate performed certain behaviors, such as face rubbing or foot shaking, participants unintentionally rubbed their faces more or shook their feet more. In some cases, confederates were intentionally unlikable and mimicry still occurred. Participants were not able to report after the interaction what the confederate's mannerisms were, or that they mimicked those mannerisms. In other experiments, the confederate either mimicked the postures, movements, and mannerisms displayed by the participants or not. Mimicked participants liked the confederate more and perceived their interactions as being smoother. Taken together, these studies suggested that mimicry leads to greater rapport, and it occurs at greater than chance levels, in the absence of any overarching goal to affiliate with an interaction partner, and without awareness or intention.

Why Does Mimicry Occur?

One current explanation for why mimicry occurs is the perception–behavior link. Essentially, perceiving someone behave in a certain way activates a representation of that behavior in the mind of the perceiver and makes the perceiver more likely to engage in that behavior too. This happens because the mental representation that is activated when a person perceives a behavior overlaps with the mental representation that is activated when the person engages in that behavior [Page 572]himself or herself, so the activation of one leads to the activation of the other.

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