Not only do we like people who mimic us more but we are willing to help them out if they request favours from us.47 We even feel like a better human being after we have been copied and it can last long after the encounter. In one study, after being mimicked, participants donated twice as much money to a charity box as they left the experiment compared to those who had not been copied even though the donations were anonymous.48 We even tip waitresses more when they mimic us.49
However, we are not simply puppets at the mercy of others tugging on our strings to control how we feel about them. Even though we may not be consciously aware of the mimicry, riding on top of this mirroring system of social interaction is an appraisal veto that seems to be double-checking for interlopers. We tend to mimic only those people from our own social circles and those with whom we want to be affiliated. We don’t mimic those outside our social groups. In fact, we dislike individuals from outside of our social group more if they mimic us. In one study, white Dutch adults who scored highly on tests that measure prejudice disliked a computer-generated avatar that mimicked them if it appeared to have a Moroccan face rather than a white European one.50
The Rhythm of Life
This process of liking others who copy us appears early in development. The young infant’s facial imitation could be an early example of mimicry where the motor system of the brain is automatically triggered by watching the movements of others. This might explain why the repertoire of behaviours is very limited at first – this is not too surprising given what movements newborns can actually make by themselves. Over the next twelve months the opportunity to copy others increases and the Machiavellian babies look out for those who copy them. Five-month-old babies placed in a baby walker that enables them to scoot about the floor prefer to approach a stranger who has mimicked them and acted in a synchronized manner than one who did not respond to the babies’ behaviour in a contingent way.51 Sometimes it is not only the lack of mimicking that puts babies off, but the timing and amount of effort. Mothers with post-natal depression can have either a very flat emotionless interaction with their babies or go over the top with an exuberant flurry of attempted interaction. Either way, two-month-old babies prefer the more measured and synchronized interactions.52
Synchrony seems to be an important characteristic of social interaction. Turn-taking is essential during conversations as anyone listening to a radio interview knows that not everyone can be heard at once. We have to take turns during communication. Again these patterns are established early in development. As mothers breastfeed their infants, they instinctively know how to synchronize their movements and baby talk to fit with their child’s sucking patterns which come in bursts and pauses.53
Synchrony of movements and timing continue to influence the nature of social interactions throughout our lives. Children must learn to take turns and control their impulses and urges. Routines are learned that emphasize the importance of coordination with others. Those who fail to develop control of their selves in the presence of others are said to be out of control. All the institutions that make up our societies – schools, churches and armies – thrive on synchrony to solidify ties between their members. Dancing and singing are synchronized activities that depend on timing to be pleasurable. In today’s modern army where the combat troop member is more of a technician than a field grunt, soldiers are still taught to march in unison as a means of establishing group harmony. This is why we say that individuals failing to conform to the group are ‘getting out of step’ or ‘falling out of line’.
Regimentation is not just a way of gaining control over large numbers of individuals. Rather it actually promotes prosocial behaviour. In one study, participants were walked around a college campus either in step or out of step with their colleagues.54 Both groups then played a trade-off game where the goal was to optimize winnings by members choosing the same but riskier option than a safer option that paid out less. In short, if members thought there was less group cohesion they tended to go for the safer bet. What researchers found was that those who walked in unison before the test did much better by selecting the responses that indicated a sense of group cohesion even though they were completely unaware of the purpose of going for a walk. Even Americans who sang along with the Canadian national anthem ‘O Canada’, rather than simply listening to it or reading the lyrics, were more likely to succeed in trade-off games that tested how much we trust others.
Walk This Way
Yale psychologist John Bargh has shown that these chameleon effects can operate simply by reading about the attributes of others. This is priming, which reflects the way that the circuits of the brain that store related information can be influenced by external events. For example, when students were asked to unscramble sentences that contained words related to being elderly such as, ‘forgetful, retired, wrinkle, rigid, traditional, bitter, obedient, conservative, knits, dependent, ancient, helpless, gullible’, they left the experimental room walking like an old person. They were slower and frailer. If they read sentences that contained words related to being rude such, ‘bold, bother, disturb, intrude, annoyingly, audaciously, brazen, impolitely, infringe, obnoxious’, they were more likely to interrupt a conversation than students who had read polite words.55
These influences of external events work because the mere exposure to words triggers thoughts that for a moment can influence our behaviours. It is not only actions – even our general knowledge can be primed to be better or worse. If you are asked to imagine what it must be like to be a professor for five minutes, then you will perform better on Trivial Pursuit questions than if you imagine being a soccer hooligan.56 Claude Steele, one of the most prominent African American psychologists, has been looking at how stereotypes distort behaviours.57 White students primed to think about being black African Americans responded with hostility when asked to repeat a task they had just completed, indicating that negative stereotypes can be triggered in the same manner. Just listing your race can influence the way you perform on a task. When asked to list their race before sitting an IQ test, African Americans did significantly worse than if they had not been asked.
These priming effects can even be triggered unconsciously through mimicry by others. For example, in mathematics tests there is a racial stereotype that Asian Americans do better than Caucasian Americans who do better than African Americans.58 To see if this stereotype could be triggered by mimicry, Asian American, African American and white Caucasian students were asked to take a mathematics test.59 Before they took the test, each one sat in a waiting room where there was another student of the same ethnic background who was also taking the test. The other student was, in fact, a confederate of the experimenters who had been instructed to either mimic or not mimic the real subject. When there was no mimicking, all three groups performed equally well, showing that the stereotype was not activated. However, if they had been mimicked by the confederate, Asian Americans performed significantly better than the white Caucasians, whereas the African Americans tended to show poorer performance. The same mimicry effect was found with the sex stereotype that women are not as good at mathematics as men.