Top-Down Modulation of Motor Priming by Belief about Animacy: A Registered Replication Report

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Research has shown that people automatically imitate others and that this tendency is stronger when the other person is a human compared with a nonhuman agent. However, a controversial question is whether automatic imitation is also modulated by whether people believe the other person is a human. Although early research supported this hypothesis, not all studies reached the same conclusion and a recent meta-analysis found that there is currently neither evidence in favor nor against an influence of animacy beliefs on automatic imitation. One of the most prominent studies supporting such an influence is the study by Liepelt and Brass (2010), who found that automatic imitation was stronger when participants believed an ambiguous, gloved hand to be human, as opposed to wooden. In this registered report, we provide a high-powered replication of this study (N = 199). In contrast to Liepelt and Brass (2010), we did not find an effect of animacy beliefs on automatic imitation. However, we did find a correlation between automatic imitation and perceived self-other similarity. Together, these results suggest that the gloved hand procedure does not reliably influence automatic imitation, but interindividual differences in perceived similarity do.

Original languageEnglish
JournalExperimental Psychology
Volume70
Issue number6
Pages (from-to)355-365
Number of pages11
ISSN1618-3169
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.11.2023

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    Research areas

  • animacy, automatic imitation, beliefs, replication
  • Philosophy