No abstract

Research has shown that mimicry increases the social influence of the mimicker and leads to greater liking of the mimicker. It has been proposed that mimicry is exhibited to create affiliation and rapport during social interaction. In two experiments (total N = 95) we manipulated the role of incidental similarity between two individuals on mimicry behavior. Undergraduates who believed they had (vs. did not have) the same first name (Study 1) or same subject of study (Study 2) as a target presented on videotape were more likely to mimic the target’s nonverbal behavior. Results support the notion that mimicry helps to create affiliation and rapport because the desire to build such a relationship is higher in the similarity condition.

This study tested, in a natural setting, the effect of mimicry on people's disposition toward helping others and the extent to which this helping behavior is extended to people not directly involved in the mimicry situation. In the main street of a busy town, men (n = 101) and women (n = 109) passersby were encountered and asked for directions. These passersby were subjected to mimicry by naïve confederates who mimicked either verbal behavior alone or verbal and nonverbal behaviors together, including arm, hand, and head movements. In the control condition, passersby were not mimicked. Following this first encounter, each subject was then met further down the street by a second confederate who asked for money. The results show that people who had been mimicked complied more often with a request for money and gave significantly more, suggesting they were more helpful and more generous toward other people, even complete strangers.

Research found that mimicry behavior led to increased helping behavior toward the mimicker and is associated with higher positive evaluation of the mimicker. Furthermore, studies on helping behavior focused only on implicit helping behavior, whereas no experimental study on explicit helping request was tested. An experiment was carried out in which a female student-confederate mimicked or not mimicked a participant during a discussion about paintings and, after that, solicited the participant for a written feedback about an essay. It was found that mimicry increased compliance to the confederate's request.

People interact more readily with someone whom they think they have something in common with. At a pedestrian crossing, confederates asked participants for the time and, in one condition, said she/he had the same watch as the participant. The amount of time that participants lingered near a confederate was used as the dependent variable. Participants in the similarity condition spent significantly more time near the confederate than when no similarity was manipulated. The results showed that similarity fosters implicit behavior, adding to the growing body of data on the positive effects of similarity and its role in social interaction.