"I show how you feel": Motor mimicry as a communicative act.

Abstract

Elementary motor mimicry (e.g., wincing when another is injured) has been a classic problem in social psychology, with previous theories treating it as the overt manifestation of some intrapersonal process such as vicarious emotion. In a two-part experiment, we tested the hypothesis that motor mimicry is instead an interpersonal event, a nonverbal communication intended to be seen by the other. The first part examined the effect of a receiver on the observer's motor mimicry: The victim of an apparently painful injury was either increasingly or decreasingly available for eye contact with the observing subject. Microanalysis showed that the pattern and timing of the observer's motor mimicry were significantly affected by the visual availability of the victim. In the second part, naive decoders viewed and rated the reactions of these observers. Their ratings confirmed that motor mimicry was consistently decoded as "knowing" and "caring" and that these interpretations were significantly related to the experimental condition under which the reactions were elicited. These results cannot be explained by any alternative, intrapersonal theory, so a parallel process model is proposed: The eliciting stimulus may set off both internal reactions and communicative responses, but these function independently, and it is the communicative situation that determines the visible behavior.The order of the authors' names was determined alphabetically. This research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the University of Victoria.The authors wish to thank Brad Dishan for being an experimenter and assisting with pilot work; Lisa Bryson for scoring and discussions; and Dave Prette and Alanna Moore for scoring. The manuscript benefited greatly from the comments of David Rosenhan and the JPSP reviewers.

Why is conversation so easy?

“…There is evidence for automatic links in controlling facial expressions, movements and gestures, and speech. For example, when observing another person experiencing a painful injury and wincing, observers imitate the wince in their own expression [39]. Similarly, participants will mimic postures such as foot shaking and nose rubbing carried out by a person with whom they are conversing [40], and when they repeat another's speech they adopt the other's tone of voice as well [41].…”

Gazing at me: the importance of social meaning in understanding direct-gaze cues

“…Several studies have examined if and how direct gaze might affect mimicry responses, because mimicry is an affiliate social behaviour which is typically not consciously controlled. In a careful real-life study, eye contact from an actor who appeared to be injured caused an increase in facial mimicry from a participant, compared with a matched condition where the actor did not make eye contact [28]. Cognitive studies also show that videos with gaze cues can rapidly modulate mimicry responses [29], and that medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has a critical role in this process [30].…”

Language Style Matching as a Predictor of Perceived Social Support in Computer-Mediated Interaction Among Individuals Coping With Illness

“…Given the association between interpersonal coordination and rapport (Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991;Chartrand & Lakin, 2013), it is not surprising that interpersonal coordination has been linked to social support in prior research (Jones & Wirtz, 2007;Trees, 2000). Researchers examining this connection have largely focused on the coordination of nonverbal behavior (Bavelas et al, 1986;Jones & Wirtz, 2007;Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2011).…”