Disentangling the Sources of Mimicry: Social Relations Analyses of the Link Between Mimicry and Liking
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Mimicry is an important interpersonal behavior for initiating and maintaining relationships. By observing the same participants (N = 139) in multiple dyadic interactions (618 data points) in a round-robin design, we disentangled the extent to which mimicry is due to (a) the mimicker’s general tendency to mimic (imitativity), (b) the mimickee’s general tendency to evoke mimicry (imitatability), and (c) the unique dyadic relationship between the mimicker and the mimickee. We explored how these mimicry components affected liking and metaperceptions of liking (i.e., metaliking). Employing social relations models, we found substantial interindividual differences in imitativity, which predicted popularity. However, we found only small interindividual differences in imitatability. We found support for our proposition that mimicry is a substantially dyadic construct explained mostly by the unique relationship between two people. Finally, we explored the link between dyadic mimicry and liking, and we found that a person’s initial liking of his or her interaction partner led to mimicry, which in turn increased the partner’s liking of the mimicker.
Details
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 131-138 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 1 |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2018 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Externally published | Yes |
External IDs
Scopus | 85040736855 |
---|
Keywords
Keywords
- social mimicry, likings, social relations model, round-robin design, social chameleons, Open data, open materials