van Baaren Rick, Janssen Loes, Chartrand Tanya L, Dijksterhuis Ap
Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Aug 27;364(1528):2381-9. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0057.
One striking characteristic of human social interactions is unconscious mimicry; people have a tendency to take over each other's posture, mannerisms and behaviours without awareness. Our goal is to make the case that unconscious mimicry plays an important role in human social interaction and to show that mimicry is closely related to and moderated by our connectedness to others. First we will position human unconscious mimicry in relation to types of imitation used in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Then we will provide support for social moderation of mimicry. Characteristics of both the mimicker and the mimickee influence the degree of mimicry in a social interaction. Next, we turn to the positive social consequences of this unconscious mimicry and we will present data showing how being imitated makes people more assimilative in general. In the final section, we discuss what these findings imply for theorizing on the mechanisms of imitation and point out several issues that need to be resolved before a start can be made to integrate this field in the broader context of research on imitation.
人类社会互动的一个显著特征是无意识模仿；人们倾向于在无意识的情况下模仿彼此的姿势、习性和行为。我们的目标是证明无意识模仿在人类社会互动中发挥着重要作用，并表明模仿与我们与他人的联系密切相关且受其调节。首先，我们将把人类无意识模仿与认知心理学和认知神经科学中使用的模仿类型联系起来。然后，我们将为模仿的社会调节提供支持。模仿者和被模仿者的特征都会影响社会互动中的模仿程度。接下来，我们将探讨这种无意识模仿带来的积极社会后果，并展示数据说明被模仿通常会如何使人们更具同化性。在最后一部分，我们将讨论这些发现对模仿机制理论化的意义，并指出在将该领域整合到更广泛的模仿研究背景之前需要解决的几个问题。
