Mimicry and Imitation Mimicry as defined by Merriam Webster is the action or art of imitating someone or something, typically in order to entertain or ridicule. </ref> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imitation </ref>. In general, all humans have an automatic tendency to imitate others. One striking characteristic of human social interactions is unconscious mimicry. People have a tendency to take over each other's posture, mannerisms, and behaviors without awareness. A goal for behaviorist is to make the case that unconscious mimicry plays an important role in human social interaction and also have the ability to show that mimicry is closely related to and moderated by our connectedness to others. Imitation, by definition, is the assumption of behavior observed in other individuals. </ref>http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imitation. </ref>. Imitation is also a truly social phenomenon, as it takes two to imitate. Although, from opinion, the statement may seem quite trivial, however, the social nature of imitation in fact has not been fully appreciated by theorizing on imitation. Through modern research we know a lot about the mechanisms of imitation are contrived from a cognitive, developmental, and neuropsychological perspective although the social moderators and consequences are less well understood.

General questions abound with regards to mimic and imitation.  Such questions still remain unclear, such as do we imitate everybody or are we more selective?  What are the social consequences of imitation?  How does our relationship to the mimicker moderate imitation and its consequences? 
Types of Imitation: Unconscious or Human Mimicry  

Under social psychological studies, mimicry is defined as unconscious or automation imitation of gestures, behaviors, facial expressions, or speech and movement. Example: Two people are at a bar and are engaged in small talk and are seemingly unaware that each take on the same posture, nod their heads, and make the same facial expression while rubbing their face or touching the hair. This type of mimicry is different from the more conscious types of imitation that have been studied in the learning, modelling and acculturation. This type of mimicry is different from the types used in research in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience that has focused on imitation. Studies have shown that people automatically mimic others. This effect has been observed with an extensive variety of behaviors. One type of behavior that is especially susceptible to mimicry is speech. For instance, people mimic words (Bock, 1986, 1989), accents (Giles, & Prowesland, 1975), rate of speech (Webb, 1969, 1972), tone and voice (Neumann & Strack, 2000), and syntax (Levelt & Kelter, 1982). Capella and Panalp (1981) and found that in dyadic conversations, people have a tendency to assimilate the way they speak, for example, in rhythm and pauses. Research has also shown that, besides speech, people often mimic laughter, facial expressions, behaviors, emotions and moods. Study: The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology released results from a 2001 study that recorded two experiments investigating the idea that mimicry leads to pro-social behavior. Hypothesis: The study hypothesized that mimicking the verbal behavior of customers would increase the amount of the tips received. Participants: In the initial experiment a small sampling of waitress were used in a busy restaurant. Upon arrival into to the restaurant, a waitress asked each group of customers to select a choice of seating and would guide customers to their seat. After a controlled time to return to waitress station for menu and cutlery she returned to take orders. Sixty groups of customers without their awareness, participated in the experiment. In Experiment 1, a young waitress was allowed to either mimic over half of her customers by literally repeating the order she had taken from the drinks to the check. In non-mimicry condition, the waitress orders were not to be repeated or mimic to customers. With the exception of the verbal mimicry or words “okay” or “coming up” the waitress was instructed to ensure that all other behaviors were the same across conditions. Discussion: To test the prediction that mimicry leads to a higher tip, the size of the tips were confirmed with the hypothesis that mimicry increases tipping. When a waitress mimicked her customers by literally repeating their order, she received a larger tip than when she did not mimic her customers. Mimicry increased the size of the waitress’ tip by 68%. These results suggests that mimicking may be beneficial by making people more generous towards those who mimic them. However, there has been recent studies demonstrating that behavioral mimicry occurs spontaneously even among strangers. Revealed within the studies presenters provided evidence that mimicry can be used to increase tip size. Previous studies have also shown that mimicry enhances positive feelings for the mimicker. The present studies went beyond these findings by showing that mimicry has important behavioral consequences. Taken together, these studies indicate that people who are being mimicked become generous towards the person who mimics them, therefore providing support for the adaptive function of mimicry. Characteristics of both the mimicker and the mimicked influence the degree of mimicry in a social interaction. Results: The results from Experiment 1 reflected that the waitress received significantly larger tips when mimicked customer mannerisms, tone, and voice inflections. In Experiment 2, a reference condition point was stipulated in that an average tip would be assessed prior to the experiment, therefore eliminating greed and the motivating behaviors should a customer refuse or fail to leave a tip for the waitress. The results from Experiment 2 revealed that mimicry did indeed lead to significantly larger tips. These results validate that mimicry can be advantageous for the imitator because it can make people more generous and give freely. THEORY: Theoretically, the difference between being and not being imitated can be conceptualized as the presence or absence of compatible sensory and motor concepts. When we are imitated it means our sensory and motor activation resemble each other more compared to cases where we are not imitated. How the brain detects this and how that subsequently affects our pro-social orientation is still a mystery, although the suggested link between the neural bases of imitation and empathy may be a starting point to which most researchers have drawn conclusive results. CONCLUSION: The mere fact that unconscious mimicry is so pervasive and omnipresent in human is in itself relevant to behaviorism. There are two possible mechanisms by which mirror neurons can influence behavior; a ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ way. Direct imitation, of which unconscious mimicry seems to be an example, is present early in human development. Whereas monkeys and chimpanzees are indeed capable of imitation, they seem to use and apply imitation more conservatively, while human children (and adults) seem to be more ‘enthusiastic’ imitators. Social processes does play a crucial role in mimicry and probably in most types of imitation. What has been researched and reveals simply stated that self-evaluation is as inward directed attention, therefore it is the simplest of tasks that we as humans we do unknowingly.

SOURCES:

Rick van Baaren, Loess Janssen, Tanya L. Chartrand and Ap Dijksterhuis, “Where is the Love? The Social Aspects of Mimicry”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. (2009).

Mimicry for Money, Behavioral Consequences of Imitation, Rick B. Van Baaren, Rob W. Holland, Bregje Steenaert, and Ad van Knippenberg, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, (2003).

Bandura, A., A Social learning through Imitation, Nebraska -Symposium on Motivation (ed. M. R. Jones). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, (1962).

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1528/2381.full.html

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imitation