"I Show How You Feel": Motor Mimicry as a Communicative Act

Elementary motor mimicry (e.g., wincing when another is injured) has been a classic problem in social psychology, with previous theories treating it as the overt manifestation of some intrapersonal process such as vicarious emotion. In a two-part experiment, we tested the hypothesis that motor mimic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality and social psychology 1986-02, Vol.50 (2), p.322-329
Main Authors: Bavelas, Janet Beavin, Black, Alex, Lemery, Charles R, Mullett, Jennifer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Imitation (Learning)
Interpersonal Interaction
Mimicry (Biology)
Nonverbal Communication
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social interactions. Communication. Group processes
Social psychology
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Summary:Elementary motor mimicry (e.g., wincing when another is injured) has been a classic problem in social psychology, with previous theories treating it as the overt manifestation of some intrapersonal process such as vicarious emotion. In a two-part experiment, we tested the hypothesis that motor mimicry is instead an interpersonal event, a nonverbal communication intended to be seen by the other. The first part examined the effect of a receiver on the observer's motor mimicry: The victim of an apparently painful injury was either increasingly or decreasingly available for eye contact with the observing subject. Microanalysis showed that the pattern and timing of the observer's motor mimicry were significantly affected by the visual availability of the victim. In the second part, naive decoders viewed and rated the reactions of these observers. Their ratings confirmed that motor mimicry was consistently decoded as "knowing" and "caring" and that these interpretations were significantly related to the experimental condition under which the reactions were elicited. These results cannot be explained by any alternative, intrapersonal theory, so a parallel process model is proposed: The eliciting stimulus may set off both internal reactions and communicative responses, but these function independently, and it is the communicative situation that determines the visible behavior.
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.50.2.322