Abstract
For over two hundred years, social psychologists have been puzzled by elementary motor mimicry—overt behavior by an observer that is appropriate to the situation of the other rather than to the observer's situation. This ubiquitous but fleeting behavior has not previously been amenable to experimental study, which might elucidate its meaning or meanings. The present article describes techniques for eliciting and videotaping such reactions in the lab. A wide variety of stimuli can be used to evoke smiling, wincing, leaning, and other motor mimicries. Recording is best done in split-screen, so that the relation between the behaviors of observer and observed can be analyzed. Several reliable scoring options are described (qualitative, quantitative, microanalysis, and self-report). Experimental controls can be introduced to rule out artifacts that might appear to be motor mimicry. These methods are introduced in the hope that the many different theories that have been offered to explain this phenomenon might finally begin to be tested.
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The authors are with the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria.
Order of authors is alphabetical. Scott MacInnis is now with the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education, Province of British Columbia. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Victoria, have provided financial support since the earliest phases of this project. David Rosenhan and Carol Sigelman made valuable comments on the manuscript. The experimenters in the studies on which this article is based included Geoffry Smith, Susan Cathro, and Brad Dishan.
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Bavelas, J.B., Black, A., Lemery, C.R. et al. Experimental methods for studying “elementary motor mimicry”. J Nonverbal Behav 10, 102–119 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01000007
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01000007