Should I copy you? Social control of mimicry

In everyday actions, people often unconsciously copy each other's gestures, stance and movements; this is termed mimicry. The amount of mimicry in an interaction depends on the character of the interaction partner. We have shown that when confronted with a nasty high-status person, participants mimic more than when meeting a nice high-status person or a nasty-low status person. This suggests that mimicry is a strategic social response directed towards individuals who have influence and are hard to interact with.
This project will test two different accounts of the origins of person-specific mimicry and how this is controlled by the brain.Under a general priming account, an encounter with a high-status person leads to a nonspecific increase in mimicry for the next few minutes. Under the Machiavellian account, control of mimicry is much faster and specific to the current interaction. We will use two carefully controlled behavioural studies and one neuroimaging study to distinguish these hypotheses and reveal the brain mechanisms for the control of mimicry. The results of these two studies will provide a clear test of the Machiavellian mimicry hypothesis, and will thus advance our scientific understanding of how mimicry works.