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Implicit Behavioral Mimicry: Investigating the Impact of Group Membership

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Abstract

Two experiments investigated the impact of group membership on non-conscious behavioral mimicry. Female participants viewed videotapes of female confederates who rubbed their faces whilst describing a picture. The extent to which the participant mimicked this face rubbing behavior was assessed from video footage taken using a hidden video-camera. Experiment 1 showed greater mimicry of a member of an in-group than of a member of an out-group. Experiment 2 showed both explicit and implicit liking of a target group to predict the extent of mimicry of a member of that group. There was a positive relationship between implicit liking and mimicry but a negative relationship between explicit liking and mimicry. Results are discussed in terms of processes underlying mimicry.

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Notes

  1. Behavioral mimicry can also occur as a result of deliberate intention, but such mimicry is not the focus of the present research.

  2. It should be noted that explicit membership of Christian groups is relatively rare in New Zealand.

  3. An analysis using number of face touches rather than the percentage of time touching the face revealed a similar pattern of results. An index of number of face touches per minute was created by subtracting the rate in the baseline period from that in the experimental period. There was a significant effect of target, F (1,25) = 7.13, p < .02. When watching the non-Christian, participants showed an increase in rate of face touching compared to the baseline, but when viewing the Christian confederate the rate decreased relative to baseline (Ms = 1.12 vs. −.61). Full details of means and distributions are shown in Table 1.

  4. Cohen’s d was calculated using the formula recommended by Dunlap, Cortina, Vaslow, and Burke (1996) for matched groups or repeated measures designs.

  5. The correlation between mimicry scores for the Christian and non-Christian confederate was extremely low, r (45) = .006, p = .97.

  6. Two similar measures were created from the ranks for each liking score. For each liking measure the scores were ranked from the lowest (least liking) to the highest. These ranks were then summed to form one index—highest scores being obtained by those scored highly on both the implicit and the explicit liking scores. A second index was created by subtracting the implicit ranking from the explicit ranking. As for the z-score indices, there was no correlation between the summed ranking index and the mimicry difference score (r (43) = .122, p = .44) but a significant negative correlation between the difference rank index and the mimicry difference score (r (43) = .462, p < .01)

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sarah Austin and Gemma Young for acting as confederates, Sanna Malinen, Katherine Stevenson and Steven Gaukrodger for their assistance in the data collection, coding and analysis, and Brenda Major and Jim Blascovich for comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. This research was supported by grants U2043 and D3336 from the University of Canterbury. Dr. Yabar is now at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, 8020, New Zealand

    Yanelia Yabar, Lucy Johnston & Lynden Miles

  2. University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Victoria Peace

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  1. Yanelia Yabar
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  2. Lucy Johnston
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Correspondence to Lucy Johnston.

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Yabar, Y., Johnston, L., Miles, L. et al. Implicit Behavioral Mimicry: Investigating the Impact of Group Membership. J Nonverbal Behav 30, 97–113 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-006-0010-6

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