Mimicry eases prediction and thereby smoothens social interactions

ABSTRACT

In their “social contextual view” of emotional mimicry, authors Hess and Fischer (2022) put forward emotional mimicry as a social regulator, considering it a social act, bound to certain affiliative contexts or goals. In this commentary, we argue that the core function of mimicry is to ease predicting conspecifics’ behaviours and the environment, and that as a consequence, this often smoothens social interactions. Accordingly, we make three main points. First, we argue that there is no good reason to believe that the mimicry of negative expressions is fundamentally different than the mimicry of positive or ambiguous or autonomic expressions. Second, we give examples of empirical evidence that mimicry is not always a social act. Third, we show that mimicry has primary benefits for the mimicker. As such, we will briefly summarise and elaborate on the relevant findings in these respects, and propose a comparative, multi-method and ecologically valid approach which can explain the multifaceted character of the phenomenon.

KEYWORDS:

• Comparative psychology
• emotional mimicry
• emotional contagion
• physiological synchrony
• evolution of mimicry

Acknowledgements

The authors herewith thank Eliška Procházková for her feedback and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Netherlands Science Foundation (016.VIDI.185.036) from NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) and the European Research Council (ERC) (Starting Grant #802979) to Mariska E. Kret.