motor contagion induced by action observation in hammer throw

In sports, success and failure are believed to be
contagious. Yet it is unclear what might cause contagion. This study
investigated whether motor contagion is associated with the active observation
of the kinematic actions of others. In
Experiment 1, six skilled hammer throwers threw a hammer after watching a video
of a model throwing toward the left, center, or right. The video included two
types of action kinematics which resulted in throw directions that were either
easy or difficult to predict based on the model’s kinematics. In Experiment 2,
the athletes threw hammers after watching the same stimuli as Experiment 1, but
while engaging in one of two types of focus (self-focus
or non-self-focus) to determine whether motor contagion could be
diminished. Results demonstrated that the direction of each participant’s throw
was more influenced by the videos that contained easy action kinematics, supporting
a critical role for the meaningfulness of the link between an action and its
outcome in producing motor contagion. Motion analysis revealed that motor contagion was not likely to be a result of the observer
imitating the model’s action kinematics. The contagion observed in
Experiment 1 disappeared when participants engaged in self-focus. These results
suggest that motor contagion is influenced by the
predictability of an action outcome when observing an action, and that motor
contagion can be inhibited through self-focus when observing.