Bretter Christian, Unsworth Kerrie L, Robinson Mark A
Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2024 Aug;77(8):1678-1693. doi: 10.1177/17470218231208699. Epub 2023 Oct 30.
Non-verbal mimicry (i.e., being posturally similar by copying another person's body language) has been shown to increase evaluations of the mimicker. Concurrently, extensive research in social psychology has demonstrated a negative effect on interpersonal evaluations when one perceives others as cognitively dissimilar, often resulting in interpersonal conflicts. Across two experiments (Experiment 1: = 159, Experiment 2: = 144), we tested our hypotheses that mimicry, compared with no mimicry, will make mimickers come across as more likable and competent regardless of whether they were perceived as cognitively dissimilar or not (Experiment 1) and regardless of the extent to which they were perceived as cognitively dissimilar (Experiment 2). Broadly, we found support for our hypotheses, and via mediation sensitivity analyses, we found that the effect of mimicry, at least for likability, was mediated by participants' perceived personal similarity to the mimicker. Non-verbal mimicry may thus be one way of alleviating interpersonal conflicts via increasing perceptions of personal similarity regardless of initial cognitive dissimilarity.
非言语模仿（即通过模仿他人的肢体语言在姿势上与之相似）已被证明会提高对模仿者的评价。与此同时，社会心理学的大量研究表明，当一个人认为他人在认知上与自己不同时，会对人际评价产生负面影响，这往往会导致人际冲突。在两项实验中（实验1：N = 159，实验2：N = 144），我们检验了我们的假设，即与不模仿相比，模仿会使模仿者无论是否被视为在认知上与他人不同（实验1）以及无论被视为在认知上与他人不同的程度如何（实验2），都显得更讨人喜欢且更有能力。总体而言，我们的假设得到了支持，并且通过中介敏感性分析，我们发现模仿的效果，至少就讨人喜欢程度而言，是由参与者所感知到的与模仿者的个人相似性所介导的。因此，非言语模仿可能是一种通过增加对个人相似性的感知来缓解人际冲突的方式，而无论最初的认知差异如何。
