Better Living Through Imitation
The "social glue" function of imitation is well documented.
Again from Volume 2 of Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science. These quotes are from an article in that volume by Ap Dijksterhuis, titled "Why We Are Social Animals: The High Road to Imitation as Social Glue."
Recently, Lakin and Chartrand (2003) showed that when people have the goal to affiliate, they imitate more. It is important to note that the degree of imitation was not the result of a strategic, conscious choice. The goal to affiliate was activated among participants without their awareness. All that was done was that participants were presented subliminally with words related to affiliation (such as affiliate, friend, together), whereas control participants were not presented with these words. In a subsequent interaction with a confederate, the participants with the subliminally activated goal to affiliate imitated more. The confederate touched his or her face repeatedly, and the participants with the subliminally activated goal to affiliate did so too. These findings are particularly interesting because they clearly emphasize the social function of imitation. If we want to be liked, we imitate more, without being aware of it.
Research on mood contagion also sheds light on the important relation between imitation and liking. In experiments conducted by Neumann and Strack (2000), the participants listened to an audiotaped speech given by a stranger. While they were listening, the participants were asked to repeat what they heard and were audiotaped themselves. It was found that the participants adopted the tone of voice of the person on the tape they listened to. A sad tone of voice on the tape elicited a sad tone of voice in the participant, whereas a happy voice led to a happy voice in the participant. It is important to note that the participants changed their moods to agree with the mood of the person on the tape. In other words, imitation led to mood contagion.
The beneficial effects of mood contagion or mood sharing have been documented extensively. Bavelas et al. (1986, 1987) have shown that mood sharing led to greater liking (on various different measures) in a large series of studies. Zajonc et al. (1987) extended this work in an intriguing way. They reasoned that couples who had lived together for a period of time should have experienced the same emotions at the same times very often, and because frequent facial expressions eventually lead to changes in facial lines, they hypothesized that partners should start to look more like each other the longer they are together. In their experiment, they gave participants twenty-four photographs. These photographs were those of the partners of twelve married couples. Some photographs were made at the wedding, whereas others were made 25 years later. The task of the participants was to assess the degree of resemblance of various pairs of photographs. As predicted, partners who were together for 25 years resembled each other more than random pairs of the same age and than newly wed couples. . . .
Finally, van Baaren et al. (2003) demonstrated a more mundane but nonetheless spectacular benefit of imitation. Based on the research by Chartrand and Bargh (1999) that clearly shows that imitation leads to liking, they conducted a field experiment in a restaurant. They first established the average tip that waitresses received during a normal evening. They then instructed the waitresses to imitate the verbal behavior of their customers. That is, they were instructed to literally repeat the order for each customer. On other days, they were instructed to avoid literal imitation. In two separate studies, it was shown that exact verbal mimicry significantly enhanced the tips, whereas avoidance of mimicry reduced tipping compared to the baseline.
To summarize, the "social glue" function of imitation is well documented. Imitation of postures, speech, and facial expression leads to greater rapport and liking, to smoother interactions, to mood contagion (which can lead to a more satisfactory relationship), and even to a higher income.
