When It’s an Error to Mirror

Kavanagh, Liam; Suhler, Christopher L.; Churchland, Patricia Smith; Winkielman, Piotr

doi:10.1177/0956797611418678

Cited by 38 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In terms of amodal frameworks, one characteristic of mimicry that is difficult to account for is its unconscious production and detection by the mimic and the model as well as by third parties (observers of mimicry). This unconscious production and detection has been established by detailed funnel interviews at the end of studies on the effects of mimicry in dyads and those that measure the effect of third parties' evaluations of mimics (e.g., Chartrand & Bargh, 1999;Kavanagh et al, 2011). When participants are asked in these interviews to say what influenced their attitude toward a mimic, a small minority mention body language at all, and of those that do a small number (often none) explicitly notice mimicry.…”

Section: Mimicry As Embodied Social Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodiment of cognition and emotion.

Winkielman

Niedenthal

Wielgosz

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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119

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In recent years, embodiment theories have become a major conceptual framework for understanding the mind, including the social mind (Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005; Schubert & Semin, 2009). The idea of embodiment theories is that higher level processing is grounded in the organism's sensory and motor experiences; hence, such frameworks are often called grounded cognition theories (Barsalou, 2008; Wilson, 2002). According to embodiment theories, processing of information about, for example, tools, flavors, melodies, driving directions, emotional faces, social and personality characteristics, and even abstract social, moral, emotional, or motivational concepts, along with many other kinds of information, is influenced, informed, associated with, and sometimes dependent on perceptual, somatosensory, and motor resources. In this chapter, we illustrate advances in the power of this account of how information processing works and discuss where new limits and challenges are being revealed. The structure of the chapter is roughly as follows. We begin by contrasting embodiment theories with their main competitors-theories that emphasize the amodal, propositional nature of mental representations. We then review some evidence for embodied processing in more cognitive domains. We then move on to a detailed description of research on embodied processing's role in emotional perception and emotional language comprehension, the role of embodied metaphor in understanding interpersonal relations and morality, and the role of mimicry in social judgment. Finally, we discuss the

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Section: Mimicry As Embodied Social Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodiment of cognition and emotion.

Winkielman

Niedenthal

Wielgosz

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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119

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“…Sometimes individuals will also implicitly learn that certain social situations call for complementary, or counter-mimicry behaviors, such as, for example, smiling submissively when a high status individual is frowning ( Carr et al, 2014 ). The ability to use context to determine whom to mimic and how is crucial, and reflects on our social competence ( Kavanagh et al, 2011 ).…”

Section: Selectivity Of Mimicry For Learning From Ingroupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Functionality of Spontaneous Mimicry and Its Influences on Affiliation: An Implicit Socialization Account

Kavanagh

Winkielman

2016

Front. Psychol.

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There is a broad theoretical and empirical interest in spontaneous mimicry, or the automatic reproduction of a model’s behavior. Evidence shows that people mimic models they like, and that mimicry enhances liking for the mimic. Yet, there is no satisfactory account of this phenomenon, especially in terms of its functional significance. While affiliation is often cited as the driver of mimicry, we argue that mimicry is primarily driven by a learning process that helps to produce the appropriate bodily and emotional responses to relevant social situations. Because the learning process and the resulting knowledge is implicit, it cannot easily be rejected, criticized, revised, and employed by the learner in a deliberative or deceptive manner. We argue that these characteristics will lead individuals to preferentially mimic ingroup members, whose implicit information is worth incorporating. Conversely, mimicry of the wrong person is costly because individuals will internalize “bad habits,” including emotional reactions and mannerisms indicating wrong group membership. This pattern of mimicry, in turn, means that observed mimicry is an honest signal of group affiliation. We propose that the preferences of models for the mimic stems from this true signal value. Further, just like facial expressions, mimicry communicates a genuine disposition when it is truly spontaneous. Consequently, perceivers are attuned to relevant cues such as appropriate timing, fidelity, and selectivity. Our account, while assuming no previously unknown biological endowments, also explains greater mimicry of powerful people, and why affiliation can be signaled by mimicry of seemingly inconsequential behaviors.

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“…Overall, our studies suggest that theories on the social modulation of mimicry must take into account how the interaction partner is likely to interpret the behaviour of the mimicker. For instance, a recent study by Kavanagh, Suhler, Churchland, and Winkielman [ 48 ] demonstrated that mimicking an unpleasant person can cause third-party observers to rate the mimicker as being less socially competent (compared to when they do not mimic the observer). Such findings, along with the experiments outlined in this paper, demonstrate the need for theoretical mimicry models to take into account the complex network of hierarchies, goals, and expectations that surround dyadic interactions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings suggest that simple, direct mimicry might not always be the best way to adapt to social interaction (especially in situations where hierarchical cues are made salient). In fact, from the observer’s perspective, simple, direct, and unqualified mimicry can be perceived as a sign of social or intellectual incompetence [ 48 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Status and Power Do Not Modulate Automatic Imitation of Intransitive Hand Movements

et al. 2016

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The tendency to mimic the behaviour of others is affected by a variety of social factors, and it has been argued that such “mirroring” is often unconsciously deployed as a means of increasing affiliation during interpersonal interactions. However, the relationship between automatic motor imitation and status/power is currently unclear. This paper reports five experiments that investigated whether social status (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or power (Experiments 4 and 5) had a moderating effect on automatic imitation (AI) in finger-movement tasks, using a series of different manipulations. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated the social status of the observed person using an associative learning task. Experiment 3 manipulated social status via perceived competence at a simple computer game. Experiment 4 manipulated participants’ power (relative to the actors) in a card-choosing task. Finally, Experiment 5 primed participants using a writing task, to induce the sense of being powerful or powerless. No significant interactions were found between congruency and social status/power in any of the studies. Additionally, Bayesian hypothesis testing indicated that the null hypothesis should be favoured over the experimental hypothesis in all five studies. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for AI tasks, social effects on mimicry, and the hypothesis of mimicry as a strategic mechanism to promote affiliation.

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When It’s an Error to Mirror

Cited by 38 publications

References 15 publications

Embodiment of cognition and emotion.

Embodiment of cognition and emotion.

The Functionality of Spontaneous Mimicry and Its Influences on Affiliation: An Implicit Socialization Account

Status and Power Do Not Modulate Automatic Imitation of Intransitive Hand Movements

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