TY - JOUR

T1 - Mimicking and anticipating others’ actions is linked to social information processing

AU - Genschow, Oliver

AU - Klomfar, Sophie

AU - Haene, Ine d.

AU - Brass, Marcel

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (www.snf. ch), grant number PZ00P1_168007. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 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 - 2018/3/28

Y1 - 2018/3/28

N2 - It is widely known that individuals frequently imitate each other in social situations and that such mimicry fulfills an important social role in the sense that it functions as a social glue. With reference to the anticipated action effect, it has recently been demonstrated that individuals do not only imitate others, but also engage in anticipated action before the observed person starts engaging in that action. Interestingly, both phenomena (i.e., mimicry and anticipated action) rely on tracking others’ social behavior. Therefore, in the present research we investigated whether mimicry and anticipated action are related to social abilities as indicated by measures of social intelligence. The results demonstrate for the first time that mimicry as well as anticipated action is correlated with an important aspect of social intelligence—namely the ability to process social information. Theoretical implications and limitations are discussed.

AB - It is widely known that individuals frequently imitate each other in social situations and that such mimicry fulfills an important social role in the sense that it functions as a social glue. With reference to the anticipated action effect, it has recently been demonstrated that individuals do not only imitate others, but also engage in anticipated action before the observed person starts engaging in that action. Interestingly, both phenomena (i.e., mimicry and anticipated action) rely on tracking others’ social behavior. Therefore, in the present research we investigated whether mimicry and anticipated action are related to social abilities as indicated by measures of social intelligence. The results demonstrate for the first time that mimicry as well as anticipated action is correlated with an important aspect of social intelligence—namely the ability to process social information. Theoretical implications and limitations are discussed.

KW - Business psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044846367&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/57c97f23-3b49-3058-b70f-06124bcf10db/

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0193743

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0193743

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 29590127

AN - SCOPUS:85044846367

VL - 13

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 3

M1 - e0193743

ER -