A dynamical look at nonconscious behavioral mimicry patterns: Self-monitoring as a moderator of dyadic behaviors
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Nonconscious behavioral mimicry is the tendency for interaction partners to unknowingly and automatically adopt each other’s gestures, postures, and mannerisms, and leads to affiliation, liking, and a feeling of closeness between them. Mimicry has been popularly dubbed the “chameleon effect” and has received much research attention in the recent past. Interestingly, the details of how this dyadic process unfolds between an interacting pair have been largely overlooked; descriptive accounts of mimicry behavior occurring in natural situations do not exist. This lack of understanding of what types of gestures are enacted, how frequently, and by whom, is evident in the discrepancy between the ways that mimicry is operationalized in studies that manipulate vs. measure the phenomenon with the use of trained confederates. \nThe current study aimed to accurately depict the mimicry process by first describing the frequency of various mimicry behaviors occurring between two females left to freely interact in a photo description task. Another main goal of the current study was to determine if individuals high in the variable of self-monitoring who have been called “social chameleons,” are the driving force behind the “chameleon effect.” Thus, the relationships between each dyad member’s self-monitoring scores and a variety of mimicry behaviors were explored. Additionally the current research intended to determine how each of these mimicry variables, both based on traditional and innovative operationalizations, were related to the positive downstream consequences typically experienced by the members of a dyad when mimicry occurs between them. \nResults demonstrate that many common behaviors are not initiated or replicated and further suggest that self-monitoring is interactively predictive of a variety of mimicry behaviors. Furthermore, mimicry behaviors, specifically for the behaviors of face-touching and foot-shaking, are associated with positive downstream consequences. A wide variety of implications for future research are discussed.
Author: Kathleen Smith
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2288482058