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9 - Neurocognitive Explorations of Social Mimicry

from Part II - Imitation and Mimicry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2016

By
Sukhvinder S. Obhi
Edited by
Sukhvinder S. Obhi  and
Emily S. Cross
Sukhvinder S. Obhi
Affiliation:
McMaster University, Ontario
Emily S. Cross
Affiliation:
Bangor University
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Summary

Abstract

Social mimicry is the ubiquitous tendency to copy the bodily movements, expressions, postures and speech patterns of an interaction partner. Since the 1990s social psychologists have studied this phenomenon intensively and have revealed many interesting findings about the factors that moderate mimicry and its consequences. Recently, social cognitive neuroscientists have also begun to study mimicry, with an emphasis on uncovering its mechanistic underpinnings. In particular, mechanisms that have been studied in tasks such as action observation and automatic imitation have been assumed to play a role in social mimicry. Although intuitive, the notion that these mechanisms are common to both tightly controlled laboratory tasks and more naturalistic social mimicry is an assumption that requires empirical investigation. Here, I present recent work that begins to provide this missing empirical link. I contextualize this work with respect to both the social psychology and the cognitive neuroscience literatures.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shared Representations
Sensorimotor Foundations of Social Life
 , pp. 171 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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