Does it pay to imitate? No evidence for social gains from lexical imitation

Abstract

According to an influential hypothesis, people imitate motor movements to foster social interactions. Could imitation of language serve a similar function? We investigated this question in two pre-registered experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to alternate naming pictures and matching pictures to a name provided by a partner. Crucially, and unknown to participants, the partner was in fact a computer program which in one group produced the same names as previously used by the participant, and in the other group consistently produced different names. We found no difference in how the two groups evaluated the partner or the interaction and no difference in their willingness to cooperate with the partner. In Experiment 2, we made the task more similar to natural interactions by adding a stage in which a participant and the partner introduced themselves to each other and included a measure of the participant's autistic traits. Once again, we found no effects of being imitated. We discuss how these null results may inform imitation research.

Keywords

• imitation
• mimicry
• alignment
• social coordination