Nonconscious Mimicry: Its Ubiquity, Importance, and Functionality

1. Nonconscious Mimicry: Its Ubiquity, Importance, and Functionality Tanya Chartrand Duke University

2. Agenda (3 chapters, plus/minus 2) • What do we mimic? (Ubiquity) • Why is mimicry important? (Importance) • Why do we mimic? (Functionality)

3. Agenda • What do we mimic? • Why is mimicry important? • Why do we mimic?

4. What do we mimic? • Verbal mimicry: accents, latency to speak, speech rate, and utterance duration, syntax, words and clauses (Bock, 1986; Cappella & Planalp, 1981; Giles & Powesland,1975; Levelt & Keltner, 1982; Matarazzo & Wiens, 1972; Webb, 1969) • Facial mimicry (O’Toole & Dubin, 1968; Dimberg, Thunberg and Elmehed, 2000) • Emotional mimicry (Lundquist & Dimberg, 1995; Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994; Neumann & Strack, 2000; Friedman and Riggio, 1981) • Behavioral mimicry (Sheflen, 1964; Bernieri, 1988; Bernieri, Reznick, & Rosenthal, 1988; Bavelas, Black, Chovil, Lemery, and Mullett, 1988; LaFrance & Broadbent, 1976)

5. Empirical Demonstration of Nonconscious Behavioral Mimicry • P interacts with 2 confeds, 1 after the other • P and Confeds take turns describing what they see in various photographs

9. Empirical Demonstration of Nonconscious Behavioral Mimicry • P interacts with 2 confeds, 1 after the other • P and Confeds take turns describing what they see in various photographs • C1 shakes foot and C2 touches face throughout session (or vice-versa) • Hidden videocamera: Does P shake foot more with foot shaker and touch face more with face toucher?

10. Amount of mimicry Number of times per min. Chartrand & Bargh (1999))

11. Agenda • What do we mimic? • Why is mimicry important? • Why do we mimic?

12. Why is mimicry important? • Nonconscious mimicry: interesting phenomenon only or theoretically important topic for scientific inquiry? • Argument for latter: It is associated with many things psychologists (and people) care about • Nonconscious mimicry helps us affiliate with others, leads us to like and help others more, brings our attitudes in line with others’, saves cognitive resources, changes self-construal and cognitive processing style, and improves self-regulation.

13. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport • Affiliation goals • Pro-social orientation • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation

14. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport • Affiliation goals • Pro-social orientation • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation Note: important either because they are triggers of greater nonconscious mimicry, or because they are downstream consequences of mimicry

15. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport • Affiliation goals • Pro-social orientation • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation Note: important for social interactions, but also for the individual in non-social ways

16. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

17. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Correlational work (Bernieri, LaFrance, Sheflen) • Experimental demonstration* (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

18. Liking and smoothness of interactions • Ps interact with one Confederate on photo description task • Confederate either mimicked the posture and mannerisms of P or not (between subjects) • P reports on ‘exit questionnaire’ how much he/she liked Confed and how smoothly interaction went with Confed

19. Ratings of confederate and interaction Chartrand & Bargh (1999)

20. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Correlational work (Bernieri, LaFrance, Sheflen) • Experimental demonstration* (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

21. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Directly activating goal • Feeling different from others • Power • Social exclusion* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

22. Proportion of time confederate was mimicked Lakin & Chartrand (2003)

23. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Directly activating goal • Feeling different from others (Uldall, Hall, & Chartrand, unpubl.) • Power (Cheng & Chartrand, 2003) • Social exclusion* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

24. Social Exclusion & Mimicry • Mental visualization experiment - manipulation of exclusion through Cyberball (Williams et al., 2000) • Participant interacts with “new” partner for second experiment – photo description • Confederate shook foot throughout • Hidden camera recorded participant foot-shaking

25. Proportion of time confederate was mimicked Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin (unpublished)

26. Social Exclusion & Mimicry • Female only participants • Excluded by ingroup (females) or outgroup (males) during cyberball game • Then interacted with male or female Confederate in photo description task • Does being excluded by ingroup lead to more mimicry than being excluded by outgroup? If so, will they mimic ingroup C more than outgroup C?

27. Social Exclusion & Mimicry Proportion of time C was mimicked Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin (under revision)

28. Social Exclusion & Mimicry Proportion of time C was mimicked Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin (under revision)

29. Social Exclusion & Mimicry Proportion of time C was mimicked Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin (under revision)

30. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Directly activating goal • Feeling different from others • Power • Social exclusion* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

31. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Feeling close to others in general* • Helping others • Mediated by self-construal?* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

32. General pro-social orientation • Ps mimicked or not • Study 1 DV: “How close do you feel to others in general?” (1-7 scale) • Study 2 DV: seating distance from unknown other • Prediction: if mimicry leads to general prosocial orientation that goes beyond dyad, mimicked Ps should feel closer to generalized other

33. “How close do you feel to people in general?” Seating distance from unknown other (# chairs) (Ashton-James,van Baaren, Chartrand, & Decety, in press)

34. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Feeling close to others in general* • Helping others (van Baaren et al., 2003, 2004) • Mediated by self-construal?* (Ashton-James, van Baaren, Chartrand, & Decety, in press) • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

35. Mediated by self-construal • Participants mimicked or not • Complete 20-statement test (“Who am I?”; Kuhn & McPartland, 1954) • Asked to fill out extra survey without pay • Prediction: mimicry will lead to interdependent self-construal and more helping, and former will mediate latter

36. Self-construal mediates effect of mimicry on pro-social behavior interdependent self-construal .41* .38* mimicry helping .45* .21*

37. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Feeling close to others in general* • Helping others • Mediated by self-construal?* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

38. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Attitudes become more similar (Bailenson & Yee, 2005) • Even when guard is up (Tanner, Ferraro, Chartrand, Bettman, under review) • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

39. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Attitudes become more similar • Even when guard is up • Cognitive processing style • Mood • Self-regulation*

40. Mimicry is important for… • Liking and rapport* • Affiliation goals* • Pro-social orientation* • Persuasion • Cognitive processing style (van Baaren, Horgan, Chartrand, & Diekmans, 2004) • Mood (van Baaren et al., in press) • Self-regulation*

41. Mimicry and Self-Regulation • Self-regulation = attempts to actively alter one’s own states and responses (Ran’s EP) • e.g., avoiding temptations, maintaining concentration, physical stamina, overriding responses, making difficult decisions • Hypothesis: Well-coordinated mimicry will leave people with relatively more resources to carry out a subsequent self-regulatory task • Poorly coordinated mimicry will leave people with relatively fewer resources to carry out a subsequent self-regulatory task

42. Mimicry and Self-Regulation • Ps mimicked or anti-mimicked by confederate • Then engage in “Operation” game where they try to remove small objects from holes without touching the metal sides • Prediction: those mimicked would perform better than those anti-mimicked

43. Self-regulation on “Operation” game Pieces removed (p = .007) Number of errors (p = .10) Finkel, Campbell, Brunell, Burke, Chartrand, & Dalton (2006)

44. Mimicry and Procrastination • Ps either mimicked or antimimicked by confederate • Ps study for upcoming math test in presence of “time-wasters” • Dv: time spent practicing math problems • Prediction: Mimicked Ps practice more than anti-mimicked Ps

45. Practicing Math Dalton, Chartrand, & Finkel (under review)

46. Why does mimicry affect self-regulation? • Does mimicry replenish resources? • Well coordinated interaction leaves people with more regulatory resources than they started with, thereby improving performance on a self-regulatory task (Fredrickson, 1998; Fredrickson et al., 2005) OR • Does antimimicry deplete resources? • Disrupting automatic process makes interaction consume more self-regulatory resources and impairs performance on a self-regulatory task (Finkel, Campbell, & Brunell, in press; cf. Keltner & Haidt, 2001)

47. Why does mimicry affect self-regulation? • Ps either mimicked, antimimicked, or interact with confederate through a divider • Ps complete “taste-perception” test • Dv: grams of cookies consumed • Prediction: • Mimicked ps would eat fewer grams of cookies than antimimicked ps • control condition will diagnose driver of effect

48. Eating Cookies Dalton et al. (under review)

49. Eating Cookies Dalton et al. (under review)

50. Can mimicry impair self-regulation? • Assumed that mimicry = coordination • Could antimimicry = coordination? • Cross-race interactions • eye contact, standing distance, smiling, and blinking (signals negative arousal & tension; Crosby et al., 1980; Dovidio et al., 1997; Fazio et al.,1995) • Hand & body movement (Richeson & Shelton, 2003) • Mimicry?