How video calls affect mimicry and trust during interactions

Abstract

Many social species, humans included, mimic emotional expressions, with important consequences for social bonding. Although humans increasingly interact via video calls, little is known about the effect of these online interactions on the mimicry of scratching and yawning, and their linkage with trust. The current study investigated whether mimicry and trust are affected by these new communication media. Using participant-confederate dyads ( n = 27), we tested the mimicry of four behaviours across three different conditions: watching a pre-recorded video, online video call, and face-to-face. We measured mimicry of target behaviours frequently observed in emotional situations, yawn and scratch and control behaviours, lip-bite and face-touch. In addition, trust in the confederate was assessed via a trust game. Our study revealed that (i) mimicry and trust did not differ between face-to-face and video calls, but were significantly lower in the pre-recorded condition; and (ii) target behaviours were significantly more mimicked than the control behaviours. This negative relationship can possibly be explained by the negative connotation usually associated with the behaviours included in this study. Overall, this study showed that video calls might provide enough interaction cues for mimicry to occur in our student population and during interactions between strangers. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction’.

Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction

“…Two papers in the special issue provide new insights. Fabiola and colleagues [ 25 ] directly examined how much typical adult participants mimicked the actions of a confederate who was seen face-to-face, on a live video call or in a prerecorded video. Results showed similar mimicry levels between face-to-face and video calls, and both of these resulted in more mimicry than the video condition.…”

“…One common theme across many of these papers is the importance of studying behaviour as participants are engaged in a genuine interaction, not just a tightly controlled task. Several of the studies provide data or reviews (Freeth [32]; Gratch [30]; Kuhlen [33]; Fabiola [25]) which argue that interactional contexts lead to qualitatively different behaviour compared to more traditional non-interactive contexts.…”

Studying and Eliciting Self-Disclosure: Interdisciplinary Review of Research Methodologies and Behavioural Paradigms

“…As a form of participant-confederate dyads technique, this elicitation method allows researchers to explore self-disclosure in dyadic contexts. It includes examining related cognitive, social, affective and cultural mechanisms related to self disclosure in dyadic settings, like reciprocity and self monitoring (e.g., Cheng & Chartrand, 2003;Schloss, Thompson, Gajar, & Schloss, 1985;Sprecher & Treger, 2015), mimicry and imitation (e.g., Cheng & Chartrand, 2003;Diana, Juárez-Mora, Boekel, Hortensius, & Kret, 2023), as well as listening and understanding (e.g., Weger, Castle Bell, Minei, & Robinson, 2014), forming first impressions (e.g., Tucker, Martz, Curtin, & Bazzini, 2007), showing empathy and emotion (e.g., Dichter et al, 2020) and building relationships in long-term experiments. However, the variance between interactions might be a confound in the experimental design.…”

Why Do We Mimic? A Predictive Framework for Automatic Mimicry

“…For instance, mimicry of negative facial expressions (e.g., anger, disgust, fear) has been observed several times to the same extent as affiliative expressions 58,59,63 . Some studies on humans have shown that mimicry of such expressions can result in less liking 58 and decreased trust 64 . Similar findings can be observed in the autonomic domain: mimicry of constricted pupil size -a non-affiliative emotional cue that could signal fatigue, boredom, or social disinterest-can decrease trust 41,65,66 .…”

“…While less extensively studied, the mimicry of scratching and yawning has also been associated with negative outcomes in humans. For instance, the mimicry of yawning resulted in decreased trust in a dyadic setting 64 . Given the evidence for mimicry of negative emotional expressions in humans and non-human animals, we believe that redefining the concept of mimicry according to its presumed evolutionary outcomes (e.g., true mimicry occurs when we mirror positive emotional expressions; otherwise, it's simply a reaction) may erroneously oversimplify the phenomenon.…”