TY - JOUR

T1 - Mimicry and automatic imitation are not correlated

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.

PY - 2017/9/6

Y1 - 2017/9/6

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.

KW - Business psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85028967353&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0183784

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0183784

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 28877197

AN - SCOPUS:85028967353

VL - 12

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 9

M1 - e0183784

ER -