Mimicry and automatic imitation are not correlated

Oliver Genschow; Sofie Van Den Bossche; Emiel Cracco; Lara Bardi; Davide Rigoni; Marcel Brass

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0183784

Mimicry and automatic imitation are not correlated

Oliver Genschow^*
, Sofie Van Den Bossche
, Emiel Cracco
, Lara Bardi
, Davide Rigoni
, Marcel Brass

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

82 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

It is widely known that individuals have a tendency to imitate each other. However, different psychological disciplines assess imitation in different manners. While social psychologists assess mimicry by means of action observation, cognitive psychologists assess automatic imitation with reaction time based measures on a trial-by-trial basis. Although these methods differ in crucial methodological aspects, both phenomena are assumed to rely on similar underlying mechanisms. This raises the fundamental question whether mimicry and automatic imitation are actually correlated. In the present research we assessed both phenomena and did not find a meaningful correlation. Moreover, personality traits such as empathy, autism traits, and traits related to self- versus other-focus did not correlate with mimicry or automatic imitation either. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Original language	English
Article number	e0183784
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	12
Issue number	9
Number of pages	21
ISSN	1932-6203
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183784
Publication status	Published - 06.09.2017
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Genschow et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Research areas and keywords

Business psychology

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

General

Access to Document

10.1371/journal.pone.0183784Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Mimicry and automatic imitation are not correlated",

abstract = "It is widely known that individuals have a tendency to imitate each other. However, different psychological disciplines assess imitation in different manners. While social psychologists assess mimicry by means of action observation, cognitive psychologists assess automatic imitation with reaction time based measures on a trial-by-trial basis. Although these methods differ in crucial methodological aspects, both phenomena are assumed to rely on similar underlying mechanisms. This raises the fundamental question whether mimicry and automatic imitation are actually correlated. In the present research we assessed both phenomena and did not find a meaningful correlation. Moreover, personality traits such as empathy, autism traits, and traits related to self- versus other-focus did not correlate with mimicry or automatic imitation either. Theoretical implications are discussed.",

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AU - Genschow, Oliver

AU - Van Den Bossche, Sofie

AU - Cracco, Emiel

AU - Bardi, Lara

AU - Rigoni, Davide

AU - Brass, Marcel

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2017 Genschow et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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N2 - It is widely known that individuals have a tendency to imitate each other. However, different psychological disciplines assess imitation in different manners. While social psychologists assess mimicry by means of action observation, cognitive psychologists assess automatic imitation with reaction time based measures on a trial-by-trial basis. Although these methods differ in crucial methodological aspects, both phenomena are assumed to rely on similar underlying mechanisms. This raises the fundamental question whether mimicry and automatic imitation are actually correlated. In the present research we assessed both phenomena and did not find a meaningful correlation. Moreover, personality traits such as empathy, autism traits, and traits related to self- versus other-focus did not correlate with mimicry or automatic imitation either. Theoretical implications are discussed.

AB - It is widely known that individuals have a tendency to imitate each other. However, different psychological disciplines assess imitation in different manners. While social psychologists assess mimicry by means of action observation, cognitive psychologists assess automatic imitation with reaction time based measures on a trial-by-trial basis. Although these methods differ in crucial methodological aspects, both phenomena are assumed to rely on similar underlying mechanisms. This raises the fundamental question whether mimicry and automatic imitation are actually correlated. In the present research we assessed both phenomena and did not find a meaningful correlation. Moreover, personality traits such as empathy, autism traits, and traits related to self- versus other-focus did not correlate with mimicry or automatic imitation either. Theoretical implications are discussed.

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Mimicry and automatic imitation are not correlated

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Research areas and keywords

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

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