begeleider: prof. dr. robert hartsuikerlib.ugent.be/fulltxt/rug01/002/274/847/rug01-002274847... ·...

Masterproef II neergelegd tot het behalen van de graad van

Promotor:

Copromotor:

Begeleider:

prof. dr. Robert Hartsuiker

Acknowledgements

The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the support

of several people, who each in their own way contributed to the accomplishment of this

project.

First of all, I would like to thank my promotor, prof. dr. Robert Hartsuiker, for

his guidance and feedback, though also encouraging me to work independently and to

determine my own path in this research.

I also wish to express my thanks to dr. Sarah Bernolet for explaining the

experimental paradigm and to provide the necessary materials.

I would also like to thank the confederate in my study’s experiments, Sara Van

Yperzele, for her many hours of help. Even during the last session she still managed to

convincingly act like it was the first time she participated.

Last but not least I would like to express my gratitude to my parents and my

sister for their unconditional and continuous support during my studies and the writing

of this thesis. No one has ever had more faith in me than they have.

Thank you!

Loes Abrahams

Abstract

Based on previous research in which (verbal) mimicry and its prosocial effects appeared

to be modulated by individual differences, the current study’s focus was twofold: we

aimed 1) to replicate and extend previous findings of syntactic mimicry and its effects

on prosocial behavior, and 2) to link Big Five personality factors both to the degree to

which individuals engage in mimicry themselves, and to the degree to which they show

enhanced prosocial behavior towards third persons after being mimicked. These

questions were assessed through the application of a picture description task which

participants performed with a confederate. In the first part of the experiment we found

that participants mimicked the confederate’s dative use (prepositional object or double

object) on picture descriptions, which was additionally negatively related to scores on

the Extraversion scale of the NEO Five Factor Inventory (a Big Five questionnaire). In

the second part of the experiment we aimed to link scores on this questionnaire to

participants’ prosocial behavior towards third persons after being mimicked (or non-

mimicked) syntactically by the confederate, as measured by the time spent on an extra

questionnaire that participants were asked to fill out voluntarily. No main differences in

prosocial behavior between a mimicry and a non-mimicry condition were found,

although in the mimicry condition there was a positive relationship between

Extraversion and prosocial behavior, and between Neuroticism and prosocial behavior,

whereas in the non-mimicry condition these relationships were negative. Implications,

limitations, and directions for future studies will be discussed.

Keywords: verbal mimicry, imitation, syntactic priming, prosocial

behavior, Big Five, personality

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 1

Mimicry………………………………………………………………………… 1

The role of individual differences in mimicry………………………………….. 6

Positive effects of mimicry and its relation with individual differences………. 16

The current study: the relationship between mimicry and personality factors… 25

Experiment 1………………………………………………………………………. 27

Method…………………………………………………………………………. 27

Participants…………………………………………………………………. 27

Materials……………………………………………………………………. 28

Procedure…………………………………………………………………… 30

Scoring……………………………………………………………………… 31

Results………………………………………………………………………….. 31

Discussion……………………………………………………………………… 35

Experiment 2……………………………………………………………………….. 37

Method…………………………………………………………………………. 37

Participants…………………………………………………………………. 37

Materials……………………………………………………………………. 37

Procedure…………………………………………………………………… 37

Scoring……………………………………………………………………… 39

Results………………………………………………………………………….. 40

Discussion……………………………………………………………………… 43

General Discussion………………………………………………………………… 45

References…………………………………………………………………………. 53

Appendix A: Target and prime items………………………………………………. 67

Appendix B: Filler items………………………………………………………….. 71

Appendix C: NEO-FFI…………………………………………………………….. 73

Appendix D: Dutch summary……………………………………………………… 77

THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY IN SYNTACTIC MIMICRY !1

Syntactic Mimicry and its Prosocial Effects:

the Role of Big Five Personality Factors

Although the main purpose of communication is to convey information, needs,

and goals, its exact implementation might serve several social functions that are beyond

interlocutors’ conscious intentions. Previous studies have for example found that when

individuals (unwittingly) imitate others’ behaviors or language they are evaluated more

positively by their conversation partner than when they do not imitate them, and that

this mimicry instigates the mimickee (i.e. the person being mimicked) to engage in

prosocial and positive behaviors (e.g. Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Van Baaren, Holland,

Steenaert, & Van Knippenberg, 2003). Chartrand and Bargh (1999, Experiment 2) were

among the first to address this hypothesis experimentally and found increased liking of

a confederate - as reported by the participant - when she imitated the participant’s

movements and postures as compared to when she had not. Additionally, other studies

have shown that some individuals are more inclined to execute imitative behaviors or

language than others; several studies suggested a modulating role of individual

difference aspects such as empathy (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999, Experiment 3; Sonnby-

Börgstrom, 2002), levels of Extraversion and Openness (Kurzius, 2015), perspective

taking and field-dependency (Horton, 2014), and levels of narcissism (Obhi, Hogeveen,

Giacomin, & Jordan, 2014). However, less is known about the possible interplay

between individual differences and the responses to being mimicked verbally. Several

studies suggest that individual differences might also play a role regarding responding

to being mimicked behaviorally (Leander, Chartrand, & Bargh, 2012; Stel, Rispens,

Leliveld, & Lokhorst, 2011; Vrijsen, Lange, Dotsch, Wigboldus, & Rinck, 2010), but up

until now no studies have examined these effects regarding verbal mimicry. The current

study therefore aimed to link individuals’ main personality traits both to their

inclinations to syntactically mimic their interlocutor themselves, and to the extent to

which being mimicked syntactically affects their prosociality towards third persons.

Mimicry

First, we will start with an introduction on mimicry, a behavior possibly as

ancient as human mankind which can be defined as the imitation of other people’s


behaviors, mannerisms and gestures (Lakin, Jefferis, Cheng, & Chartrand, 2003). A

more elaborate definition of mimicry is offered by Chartrand and Lakin (2013), who

state that mimicry is present when “people are engaging in the same (or a similar) action

at a certain time, or that a particular behavior is repeated by an interaction partner within

a short window of time, typically no longer than three to five seconds” (p. 286).

Both conscious and unconscious expressions of verbal and non-verbal mimicry

appear to be present in various facets of everyday life. Differentiating between these

two forms of mimicry, we can specify conscious mimicry as what is typically regarded

“aping behavior”; the explicit and intentional imitation of other people’s actions (Lakin

& Chartrand, 2003). Unconscious mimicry on the other hand comprises all of the

unintentional copies of our communication partners’ behaviors of which we do not have

a conscious notion, an act which might even be more prevalent in our behavior than

conscious mimicry (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). An illustrative example of unconscious

mimicry is the well-known phenomenon of yawning when one observes another

individual yawning (Provine, 1986). Experimental studies additionally found

participants to automatically mimic smiling behavior, foot shaking movements and face

rubbing movements of strangers with whom they worked on a task (Chartrand & Bargh,

1999, Experiment 1; Yabar, Johnston, Miles, & Peace, 2006). However, the scope of

unconscious mimicry reaches beyond behavioral expressions, which is reflected by the

presence of imitation of verbal aspects such as accent (Giles, 1973) and linguistic style

(Ireland & Pennebaker, 2010), which will be the main focus of the current thesis.

Such verbal mimicry seems to be as ubiquitous as behavioral mimicry and can

comprise a broad range of different linguistic aspects . Accent adaptation for example 1

appears to be an expression of verbal mimicry (e.g. Coupland, 1984). Coupland

investigated the extent to which a shopkeeper from Cardiff (Wales) adapted her accent

to that of her customers. The speech analysis focused on several linguistic variables

which were found to be valid markers of Cardiff English in previous research (the exact

Although strictly speaking verbal mimicry can be considered a form of physical or behavioral mimicry 1

as well since it involves the movement of the facial muscles, in the following we will use the term verbal mimicry to refer to the imitation of written and spoken language, and the term physical/behavioral mimicry will be used for all types of behavioral imitations that cannot be categorized as verbal mimicry.


properties of these variables are beyond the scope of the current study, for more

information see Coupland, 1980, and Coupland, 1984). As hypothesized, analysis of

these variables indicated that the shopkeeper converged her accent to that of her

customers.

Also one’s speech rate can be affected by that of one’s conversation partner. An

early study by Webb (1969) demonstrated for example that interviewees adapted their

speech rate to that of the interviewer. More recently Jungers and Hupp (2009) found

comparable results. In this research participants were offered an auditory prime sentence

at a fast or slow rate (0.24 s/syllable and 0.40 s/syllable, respectively) and were

instructed to repeat these primes. Consequently, they were required to describe a

picture. It was found that the timing of the prime correlated positively with the speed of

participants’ utterances on the picture description task. A second experiment ruled out

an explanation in terms of articulatory priming effects (for more information see

Jungers & Hupp, 2009).

However, not only how individuals convey their spoken messages appears to be

subjected to mimicry behavior, also what one says can be affected by the interlocutor’s

language use. This behavior is for example expressed in the mimicry of others’ word

use, also referred to as lexical mimicry, lexical entrainment, or lexical alignment (e.g.

Brennan, 1996). Garrod and Anderson (1987) were among the first to study this

phenomenon experimentally. In their experiment participants were required to describe

their position in a virtual maze game to another participant, of which analyses of the

dialogue indicated that over time participants tended to adjust the word use in their

descriptions to that of the other. If for example individual A decided to call a horizontal

row of nodes a line, individual B would be likely to align on this choice and would also

start using this referent (Branigan, Pickering, Pearson, & McLean, 2010; Garrod &

Anderson, 1987). Similar results were reported in a study by Brennan and Clark (1996,

Experiment 1) in which two participants had to put their set of cards in the same order

as that of the other, using descriptions of the objects on the cards. Participants tended to

adopt the terms used by the other; if one of both interlocutors would for example

describe the object on the card by naming it a dancer, this would increase the other


participant’s likelihood of also describing it as a dancer instead of for example a

ballerina, suggesting the presence of lexical alignment.

Finally, syntactic mimicry – in which the grammatical structures of the

interlocutor’s speech are being adopted – is among the most frequently observed types

of verbal mimicry and is also the focus of the current study. Levelt and Kelter’s study

(1982) showed for example that shopkeepers tended to copy the (non)prepositional

structure of the sentences used by experimenters who called them to ask at what time

their shop closed. To illustrate this, if the question was “At what time does your shop

close?” shopkeepers often started their answer with “at” as well (e.g. “At five o’clock”).

Similarly, if the question was formulated as “What time does your shop close?”,

shopkeepers often omitted the “at” from their response (e.g. “Five o’clock”). However,

critics might argue that this can also be regarded lexical mimicry, since the word “at” is

returned to the speaker. One of Kathryn Bock’s numerous syntactic priming studies

(1986) involved priming by passive transitive sentences or active transitive sentences,

or by prepositional object (PO) or double object (DO) datives. An example of an active

transitive sentence is “One of the fans punched the referee”, while the passive transitive

version would be “The referee was punched by one of the fans”. (Transitive sentences

are sentences in which the verb performs the action to the direct object.) A PO sentence

is one similar in structure to “A rock star sold some cocaine to an undercover agent”,

while a DO sentence can be illustrated by the sentence “A rock star sold an undercover

agent some cocaine” (Bock, 1986, p. 361). In short, participants were primed by the

repetition of sentences that were read aloud by the experimenter, and were consequently

asked to describe pictures to which on target trials either a passive or an active transitive

sentence structure, or a PO or a DO structure could be applied. When participants were

primed by a specific sentence structure they were more likely to employ that structure

again in the description, as compared to the alternative form. A similar experiment by

Hartsuiker and Kolk (1998b) found comparable effects in a dative priming study in

Dutch, which was also the targeted language in the current study.

The research questions of Branigan, Pickering, and Cleland (2000) were largely

similar to those of Bock (1986), except for the fact that Branigan and her colleagues


were among the first to make an innovation to the often-applied picture description

paradigm by including a confederate in the experimental session. Such a dialogue game

yielded similar results as those found by Bock among others: participants were more

likely to use a PO sentence structure to describe a picture when the confederate had

previously primed them by using that construction in a picture description as well. The

same held for DO sentence structures. Another similar study additionally pointed to the

apparent strength of syntactic priming effects by emphasizing its longevity: even with as

much as six filler items between prime and target syntactic mimicry effects could still

be observed (Hartsuiker, Bernolet, Schoonbaert, Speybroeck, & Vanderelst, 2008). The

strength of syntactic priming effects is also supported by studies reporting similar

effects in Broca’s aphasics (Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998a; Saffran & Martin, 1997; Verreyt

et al., 2013), amnesiacs (Ferreira, Bock, Wilson, & Cohen, 2008), children as young as

three years old (Shimpi, Gámez, Huttenlocher, & Vasilyeva, 2007), and signers of

American Sign Language (ASL; Hall, Ferreira, & Mayberry, 2015).

Pickering and Garrod (2004) intend to explain verbal and behavioral mimicry in

terms of interactive alignment. As its name implies, this account states that during

communication conversation partners’ linguistic and behavioral representations will

become (automatically) adjusted in the direction of the other’s. As a result,

communication will become more effortless. Pickering and Garrod argue that interactive

alignment “remove[s] the need to make complex decisions about how to represent the

mental state of the interlocutor” (p. 20). According to this theory, the use of a certain

linguistic form by the speaker would lead to the activation of this same form in the

listener’s mind. This supposition is supported by neuroimaging data suggesting that the

mirror neuron network becomes activated during mimicry of others’ behaviors (i.e. the

inferior parietal cortex and the premotor cortex; Grèzes & Decety, 2001; Iacoboni et al.,

1999; Molenberghs, Cunnington, & Mattingley, 2009). Mirror neurons become

activated when observing other individuals’ actions and mimic the observed action in

the brain (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004), their activation thus possibly reflects the

presence of mimicry neurally. Additionally, these mirror neurons also seem to respond

to being mimicked; one study investigated EEG responses to being mimicked in


spontaneous interactions and found activation in regions related to the mirror neuron

system as well (Hogeveen, Chartrand, & Obhi, 2015).

In sum, the studies discussed in this section might lead us to presume that verbal

mimicry is a robust phenomenon that can arise in a diversity of linguistic aspects such

as syntax, accent, and speech rate. Theories suggest that one of its purposes is to

decrease the cognitive load and to ease communication (Pickering & Garrod, 2004), and

additionally several neuroimaging studies suggest that mimicry and being mimicked can

be traced back neurally to the mirror neuron system.

The role of individual differences in mimicry

Although found in many different aspects of verbal and behavioral

communication, to a certain degree mimicry appears to be affected by individual

differences. Chartrand and Bargh (1999) were among the first to put forward the

question whether and which individual difference aspects might be related to behavioral

mimicry and hypothesized that a personality aspect such as empathy might be a

moderator for mimicry behavior. Importantly, Chartrand and Bargh argued that the

cognitive component of empathy (which mainly involves perspective taking) would

correlate positively with mimicry, while the affective component of empathy would be

unrelated to it. The rationale behind this reasoning is that mimicry would be generated

by the perception-behavior link, as Chartrand and Bargh argue. Similar to the working

mechanism of the mirror neuron system in mimicry previously described, the

perception-behavior link is “the finding that the mere perception of another’s behavior

automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself” (Chartrand

& Bargh, 1999, p. 893). Thus, this link would be more pronounced in people who

engage more in the cognitive act of perspective taking, leading to increased levels of

mimicry. The affective component of empathy would not be involved in the perception-

behavior link and would therefore have no impact on mimicry. To assess these

hypotheses, Chartrand and Bargh carried out an experiment in which they measured the

extent to which participants mimicked certain behavioral mannerisms of the confederate

(face rubbing and foot shaking) and set out to relate this to both components of

empathy. As expected, participants who scored high on the perspective taking subscale


of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980) exhibited increased mimicry of

the confederate’s behavior as compared to participants who scored low on this subscale.

Scores on the IRI’s emphatic concern subscale appeared to be uncorrelated with

mimicry levels, which was exactly in line with Chartrand and Bargh’s predictions.

A study applying electromyography (EMG) to compare participants scoring high

on empathy and participants scoring low on empathy according to the Questionnaire

Measure of Emotional Empathy (QMEE) obtained similar albeit partially challenging

results (Sonnby-Börgstrom, 2002). EMG is a research technique that enables the capture

of very small skeletal muscle activity, such as those in individuals’ faces. Participants in

Sonnby-Börgstrom’s research were presented pictures of happy or angry looking faces

during which their facial muscle reactions were recorded. Analyses indicated that

participants scoring high on empathy were more likely to mimic the displayed facial

expressions than were participants scoring low on empathy, as measured by the

corresponding facial muscle reactions. Since the QMEE takes into consideration both

cognitive and affective components of empathy (for more information see Mehrabian &

Epstein, 1972), it is likely that also the affective component of empathy would have

played a role in these results, which would challenge Chartrand and Bargh’s previously

discussed findings (1999). However, this is only speculation since the allocation of

participants’ scores over the different QMEE subscales was not reported.

Alternatively, the research group of Obhi, Hogeveen, Giacomin, and Jordan

(2014) hypothesized that narcissism might be a personality factor affecting mimicry.

Individuals with a narcissistic personality disorder are characterized by a sense of

grandiosity, self-centeredness, need for admiration, entitlement, arrogance, and lack of

empathy (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). More importantly, this disregard for

others would be reflected in disrupted social processing and less expressed motor-

resonance in individuals scoring high on narcissism (or on other antisocial personality

disorders). Motor resonance is a component of the mirror neuron system and involves

the activation of observers’ motor related brain areas when they witness another

individual executing an action. Obhi and his colleagues thus hypothesized that this

imperfect motor resonance would lead to impaired mimicry in narcissists. In short, in


this study participants’ task was to press a button with their index finger when a “1” was

displayed and to press a button with their middle finger when a “2” was displayed (or

the other way around). Along with the number a picture of a hand with a moving finger

(index finger or middle finger) was displayed on the screen, which was included to

create incongruent and congruent trials. Using this automatic imitation task, participants

scoring high on subclinical narcissism (i.e. a high score on narcissism though still below

the borderline of narcissism as a personality disorder [Raskin & Hall, 1979]) tended to

display less interference by incongruent trials than did participants scoring low on

(subclinical) narcissism. This smaller interference in individuals scoring high on

subclinical narcissism – as reflected by lower reaction times and error rates – indicates a

less involved motor system when observing others’ actions and, in behavioral terms, a

lower degree of automatic imitation in these individuals.

On the other hand, in a study more related to real life mimicry situations Ashton-

James and Levordashka (2013) found contrasting and more differentiating results

regarding the relationship between mimicry behavior and narcissism. Although many

studies suggest that the desire to affiliate increases individuals’ imitative behaviors (for

a comprehensive discussion see Lakin & Chartrand, 2003), Ashton-James and

Levordashka argued that it might also be the (self-centered) desire to be liked that drives

mimicry. Based on a previous study in which it was found that individuals that were

excluded during a game tended to mimic their interlocutor more afterwards (Lakin,

Chartrand, & Arkin, 2008), Ashton-James and Levordashka hypothesized that this

mimicry behavior might be brought about by the increased effort to be liked by the

other. Since narcissists specifically aim to be liked by high-status others without

genuinely feeling the desire to affiliate with them (Campbell, 1999; Morf & Rhodewalt,

2001), the researchers suggested that the hypothesis of the desire to be liked leading to

increased mimicry could be easily investigated by comparing mimicry behavior of

narcissists towards (relatively) low-status others to mimicry of high-status others. In an

experiment in which participants either conversed with a low-status confederate (a

research assistant) or with a high-status confederate (a PhD student), it was indeed

found that high-status confederates were imitated more (behaviorally) than low-status


confederates were, but only by participants scoring high on (subclinical) narcissism.

The strength of this effect was emphasized by the finding that although that individuals

scoring high on narcissism reported lower levels of affiliation with the high-status

confederate than individuals scoring low on narcissism did, the former group still

exhibited higher levels of mimicry. In sum, these findings suggest that perhaps not the

desire to affiliate but rather the desire to be liked underlies mimicry behavior, a

hypothesis that deserves more attention in future studies.

Van Baaren, Maddux, Chartrand, De Bouter, and Van Knippenberg (2003) found

that levels of self-construal orientation might affect the extent to which individuals

engage in behavioral mimicry. More specifically, in this study the research group

differentiated between interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal.

Individuals with an interdependent self-construal tend to adjust their self to the

surrounding others, while on the other hand individuals with an independent self-

construal do not let others affect their self easily (p. 1093), or more comprehensively

according to Ashton-James, Van Baaren, Chartrand, Decety, and Karremans,

interdependence of self-construal can be formulated as “the extent to which individuals

define themselves or construe their identity with reference to their social roles, groups,

status, and relationships” (2007, p. 517). Van Baaren, Maddux, and their colleagues

(2003) argued that individuals with an interdependent self-construal would engage more

in mimicry than individuals with an independent self-construal, given the relative

inclusion or exclusion of others in one’s self. This hypothesis was assessed in an

experiment in which one of both self-construal orientations was induced through

priming, after which the extent to which participants imitated several of the

confederate’s behaviors - such as foot shaking, face rubbing, and the putting down and

picking up of a pen - was measured. As predicted, participants with a successfully

primed interdependent self-construal tended to mimic the confederate’s movements

more than did participants who were successfully primed with an independent self-

construal. Similar results were found in a more naturalistic experiment by Van Baaren,

Maddux et al. in which differences in mimicry between Japanese individuals (who


scored high on interdependent self-construal) and American individuals (who scored

high on independent self-construal) were assessed.

Although seemingly supported by fewer studies than that of the role of

individual differences in behavioral mimicry, specific individual characteristics appear

to affect verbal mimicry as well. In an experiment similar to that of Branigan et al.

(2000) Horton (2014) found mimicry of datives in a picture description task that

participants performed together with a confederate. More interesting with regard to the

current interests is that Horton set out to link these findings to two individual difference

aspects, namely perspective taking and field dependency. The former variable was

included based on the previously discussed study by Chartrand and Bargh (1999,

Experiment 3) in which behavioral mimicry appeared to be enhanced in participants

who scored high on dispositional empathy, which is closely related to perspective

taking. The latter variable, field dependency, was included based on findings of a

previous research (Van Baaren, Horgan, Chartrand, & Dijkmans, 2004) in which

behavioral mimicry appeared to be heightened in participants who scored high on the

Embedded Figures Test (EFT), a measure of field-dependence/field-independence

(FDI). FDI was defined as “a cognitive style indexed by reliance upon external or

internal cues in information processing contexts” (Horton, 2014, p. 43). The term field-

independence would be applicable to individuals who possess a rather analytical

cognitive processing style that would be relatively unaffected by external factors. Field-

dependence on the other hand would describe a cognitive style that is characterized by

an influence of contextual cues on one’s mental processing (Witkin, Goodenough, &

Oltman, 1979) and was linked to an increased likelihood to engage in behavioral

mimicry in Van Baaren, Horgan, et al. (2004). First of all, the strength of the priming

effects indeed appeared to correlate positively with participants’ scores on perspective

taking. Secondly, there were significant effects of the degree of FDI on syntactic

priming found. These findings were, however, in the opposite direction as hypothesized:

while it was predicted that higher levels of field-dependence would correlate positively

with structural priming, it was found that higher levels of field-independence were

associated with more structural priming. Although these findings seem to contrast Van


Baaren, Horgan, et al.’s findings (2004), it is important to note that in the latter study the

effects of levels of FDI on behavioral mimicry were studied, while in Horton’s study

(2014) the effects of FDI on verbal mimicry were assessed. Nevertheless, the latter

study’s findings of higher levels of field-independence to be associated with increased

levels of verbal mimicry are remarkable and rather counterintuitive given the content of

the concept of FDI.

Another study hypothesized that individuals with high levels of social anxiety

would display less behavioral mimicry than individuals scoring low on social anxiety

(Vrijsen, Lange, Becker, & Rinck, 2010). Social anxiety is characterized by

impairments in social abilities (Bögels, Rijsemus, & De Jong, 2002; Voncken & Bögels,

2008) and by lowered levels of pleasantness to interact with (Heerey & Kring, 2007),

which led Vrijsen and his colleagues to suggest that this might be caused or at least

strengthened by deficiencies in mimicry behavior. Whereas in most conversations

mimicry behavior evolves naturally and is often assumed to serve the displaying of

feelings of affiliation, the absence of this behavior in high socially anxious individuals

might disrupt and impede smooth interaction. In Vrijsen and his colleagues’ study both

individuals scoring high on social anxiety and individuals scoring low on social anxiety

were included and watched a virtual avatar as it set out his opinion on a certain

(irrelevant) topic. During this presentation the avatar moved his head ten times in

specific ways. Four raters scored the extent to which participants tended to copy the

avatar’s head movements; as expected low anxious participants mimicked the avatar

more than high anxious participants. These results thus suggest that socially anxious

individuals’ impairments in social interactions might be (partially) brought about by a

lack of displaying feelings of affiliation due to their lowered levels of behavioral

mimicry. We will return to the relationship between social anxiety and mimicry in the

next section.

Yu, Abrego-Collier, and Sonderegger (2013) were among those authors who

argued that if individual differences appear to influence (verbal) mimicry, Big Five

personality traits might explain a large part of the variation in mimicry among people.

The Big Five model (Costa & McCrae, 1992) is a commonly used framework which


consists of the five main personality traits: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness,

Openness (to experience) and Conscientiousness. These factors are found based on the

lexical hypothesis, which states that highly important personality traits will become

encoded (as a single word) in people’s language. This implies that the most important

personality factors would be the ones that are referred to most often in people’s use of

language (e.g. Crowne, 2007). The Big Five personality factors are confirmed by factor

analysis across different ages and cultures among others. They do not show any overlap

in content and the main differences between individuals’ personalities would be

captured adequately and sufficiently by these factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

Therefore, including this model into a research design might offer valuable information

on which distinct individual variables might be responsible for the variation in mimicry

among individuals. Although Yu and his colleagues tested for the influence of many

different variables on phonetic mimicry of which the full discussion reaches beyond the

scope of this thesis, we wish to review the findings on the role of the Big Five traits into

more detail. Participants in this study were asked to read aloud a word list after which

they were exposed to a story told by a male narrator. In this story the target words that

were previously read by the participants were included, but the narrator’s voice onset

time (VOT) of the target words was doubled artificially. The VOT is the time that passes

between the release of a plosive and the beginning of vocal fold vibration and is often

used as an independent variable in phonetic imitation research (Nielsen, 2011). After

being exposed to the narrative, participants had to read aloud the same word list again

(in a different randomized order). After completion of the word list participants were

administered several measures, including the Big Five Inventory (BFI). It was found

that individuals who scored high on the trait of Openness tended to assimilate their VOT

of target words in the second word list significantly more to that of the narrator than did

participants who scored low on Openness. Yu et al. argued that this effect might be

caused by the greater level of engagement that goes together with the trait of Openness.

Individuals who thus engaged more in the task would pay more attention to the specifics

of how the narrator exactly pronounced the words. Apart from Openness, no significant

effects of Big Five personality traits on phonetic imitation were found.


Gill, Harrison, and Oberlander (2004) focused on only two Big Five factors,

namely Extraversion and Neuroticism. As typical in syntactic priming research, a

picture naming paradigm was applied in which in every session a real participant and a

confederate participated. In this study the primes were either in the active or passive

voice. Gill and his colleagues expected Extraversion to correlate positively with priming

effects, since Extraversion appears to be linked to approach behaviors. Individuals who

score high on Extraversion might then be more inclined to coordinate with their

conversation partner on linguistic style – and thus show more verbal mimicry – than

individuals with low levels of Extraversion would do. For Neuroticism an opposing

hypothesis was formulated: since Neuroticism tends to be associated with withdrawal

behaviors, one might expect individuals scoring high on Neuroticism to engage less in a

joint activity with their conversation partner, and thus to show less verbal mimicry than

individuals scoring low on Neuroticism. However, the results showed some

discrepancies with the hypothesized outcomes. For Extraversion, no significant effects

were found: the Low, Mid, and High Extraversion groups all displayed similar degrees

of verbal mimicry. For Neuroticism on the other hand interesting significant results

were obtained: both the High and the Low Neuroticism group showed significantly less

verbal mimicry than the Mid Neuroticism group did. The research group suggested that

these findings can be explained with an adjustment to the earlier hypothesis. Namely,

the High Neuroticism group tends to show decreased levels of verbal mimicry

according to the previously stated hypothesis, but the Low Neuroticism group might

also show decreased levels of mimicry due to their disinterest in monitoring their own

and the conversation partner’s verbal behavior (p. 467). However, the explanations of

these results are formulated rather post-hoc and should therefore be applied critically.

Based on previous studies showing that the trait of affiliation significantly

predicted imitative behaviors (Karremans & Verwijmeren, 2008; Lakin & Chartrand,

2003; Martin, Guéguen, & Fischer-Lokou, 2010) , Kurzius (2015) hypothesized that 2

individuals scoring high on the Big Five factors of Extraversion and Agreeableness

However, as a critical note we argue that given the results of Ashton-James and Levordashka (2013) 2

previously discussed one might also suggest that the desire to be liked, rather than the desire to affiliate, might have played a crucial role in these findings.


would show higher levels of speech rate imitation than individuals who score low on

these factors would do. Kurzius argued that these factors and other interindividual

differences that are found to affect mimicry behavior (e.g. empathy in Sonnby-

Börgstrom, 2002; self-construal orientation in Van Baaren, Maddux, et al., 2003) might

be more specific expressions of the overarching trait of affiliation. Additional support

for this hypothesis is offered by Extraversion’s and Agreeableness’ closeness to the

affiliation dimension on the interpersonal circumplex (for more information see Kiesler,

1996; Kurzius, 2015; McCrae & Costa, 1989; Pincus & Gurtman, 1995; Wiggins &

Pincus, 1994). The other three factors of the Big Five model - Neuroticism, Openness,

and Conscientiousness - would not affect mimicry because of their unrelatedness to

affiliation. As predicted, the results of Kurzius’ study pointed towards higher levels of

mimicry of the confederate’s speech rate (which was either fast or slow) in participants

with high scores on Extraversion. For Agreeableness, however, no significant effects

were observed. Additionally, an effect of levels of Openness on speech rate imitation

was found, with individuals scoring high on Openness imitating more than individuals

scoring low on Openness.

Recently Duffy and Chartrand (2015) addressed the hypothesis whether levels of

Extraversion and motivation to affiliate might affect behavioral mimicry. More

specifically, Duffy and Chartrand speculated that extraverts’ higher social skilfulness as

compared to introverts’ might be moderated by mimicry, but only when motivation to

affiliate is present. Thus, extraverts might unwittingly employ mimicry as a tool to

increase rapport but only when they are motivated to do so. In Duffy and Chartrand’s

experiment motivation to affiliate was manipulated by explaining to the participants that

in order to fulfill the task successfully it would be adaptive to get along with the other

participant (i.e. the confederate). In the control condition no such explanation was

given. Performing an unrelated photo description task during which the confederate

repeatedly touched her hair and face, it was found that extraverts indeed mimicked the

confederate’s behaviors more, but only in the condition in which motivation to affiliate

was present. Whereas it is usually assumed that extraverts are more sociable in general

(Argyle & Lu, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1987), Duffy and Chartrand’s study questions


this relationship by assuming that this only holds in the presence of a motivation to

affiliate.

A comprehensive third recent study on the relationship between nonverbal

mimicry and affiliation provided more differentiating findings as well (Kurzius &

Borkenau, 2015). Kurzius and Borkenau were among the first to focus on naturally

occurring mimicry behavior among two naive participants. One of their main aims was

to not only assess which broad personality factors (i.e. the Big Five factors and the

Affiliation and Dominance dimensions of the Interpersonal Circumplex model) affect

mimicry behavior, but additionally to offer a more specific and differentiating theory on

which individual differences affect which specific behaviors in which contexts. This

way they for example found that whereas Affiliation and Agreeableness enhance

mimicry of positive behaviors (e.g. nodding, leaning forward), high scores on

Neuroticism tend to be associated with increased mimicry of negative behaviors, such

as head shaking and shrugging. Surprisingly, high scores on Extraversion did not seem

to be associated with increased mimicry of positive behaviors, but rather with increased

mimicry of negative behaviors. Kurzius and Borkenau hypothesize that this might serve

the goal of communicating social status. The authors conclude that since different

behaviors have different communicative meanings, it is not surprising that mimicry can

be expressed differently depending on individuals’ personality factors, and future

studies should take this into account.

Reviewing the studies discussed in this section we can conclude that although

research regarding possible moderators of mimicry behavior stills seems to be in its

infancy, interesting results have been found. At first glance, various findings regarding

the role of specific Big Five personality factors in verbal mimicry seem to contradict

each other: whereas Gill et al. (2004) for example found significant effects of levels of

Neuroticism on verbal mimicry, this was not found in other verbal mimicry studies

(although we emphasize that these comparisons should be treated with care since

different verbal properties were studied; Kurzius, 2015; Yu et al., 2013). Similarly,

whereas Yu et al. (2013) and Duffy and Chartrand (2015) found effects of levels of

Openness on verbal mimicry, this relationship was absent in Gill et al.’s study (2004).


Nevertheless, several other previous studies aimed and succeeded to explain the

relationship between various individual difference aspects and (verbal) mimicry in

terms of differences in individuals’ desire to affiliate (e.g. Ashton-James &

Levordashka, 2013; Duffy & Chartrand, 2015; Kurzius & Borkenau, 2015). Perhaps the

diverging results concerning the role of Big Five factors in verbal mimicry might be

explainable by differences between studies regarding participants’ desire to affiliate.

Future research should therefore aim to specify the mechanisms and underlying causes

for mimicry behavior further, which is also one of the goals of the current study.

Positive effects of mimicry and its relation with individual differences

Continuing with the function of mimicry behavior, mimicry is an understandable

phenomenon from an evolutionary perspective (Lakin et al., 2003). In order to be able

to successfully pass on their genes, our ancestors had to live harmoniously with one

another. Since especially in the past people were highly dependent of each other for

survival, behaviors such as cooperation, communication and living in peace with each

other were of crucial importance. People that succeeded in this behavior were

consequently more likely to survive and reproduce. Group members’ nonverbal

behaviors could offer cues about possible dangers in the surrounding environment and it

is often argued that mimicry would be an essential tool to successfully inform others

about these dangers (Condon & Sander, 1974). Additionally, as discussed previously,

another function of mimicry behavior might be to provide a means to increase social

acceptance and affiliation (Lakin et al., 2003), which would enhance individuals’

chances of survival by belonging to the group. The nonverbal gestures that were

essential for survival and for smooth communication within groups would have become

forms of unconscious imitation over time, which would make interactions – also in

contemporary societies – more efficient (Lakin et al., 2003). It is likely that this

tendency to mimic others can nowadays be understood in terms of the need to belong

and the desire to be included in social groups (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), which can be

interpreted as an altered expression of an evolutionary adaptive function.

The hypothesis of mimicry benefiting social engagements seems to be supported

by empirical findings as well. Early studies already observed that mimicry might have


valuable effects in several contexts; mimicry in therapy sessions (Charney, 1966;

Maurer & Tindall, 1983) and in classroom settings (Bernieri, 1988) tends to increase

affiliation, empathy, and rapport for example (Hale & Hamilton, 2016). Chartrand and

Bargh (1999) were among the first to test the hypothesis of mimicry leading to

increased liking of the interaction partner experimentally and additionally argued that

imitation might facilitate the smoothness of the interaction. These hypotheses were

confirmed in an experiment in which participants were required to perform a photo

description task together with a confederate, who did or did not mimic the participant’s

movements, mannerisms, and posture during the task. Participants reported increased

liking of the confederate if the latter had mimicked them during the performance of the

task. Similar results were obtained in a more naturalistic setting in which female

confederates took part in speed dating sessions (Guéguen, 2009). When the female

confederates mimicked men’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors during five-minute

conversation sessions they were evaluated more positively in terms of (sexual)

attractiveness by their conversation partners than when they had not mimicked them.

Furthermore, as in Chartrand and Bargh’s study (1999), men perceived the interaction as

going more effortless and were additionally more likely to exchange contact

information if their behaviors were imitated during the speed dating session as

compared to when they were not. An inventive study similar to that of Vrijsen, Lange,

Becker, and Rinck (2010) found that such positive effects of mimicry on liking could

even be observed in individuals interacting with a virtual agent (Bailenson & Yee,

2005). Participants interacted with an agent in a virtual environment setting that

presented participants with a persuasive message during which their head movements

were imitated (or not) with a delay of four seconds. As expected from previous studies

with human agents, imitated participants rated the agent’s arguments are more

persuasive and evaluated him more positively than non-imitated participants did.

Comparable findings were obtained regarding feelings of liking and trust towards a

behaviorally mimicking virtual agent (Verberne, Ham, Ponnada, & Midden, 2013) and

regarding the effects of a verbally imitating (i.e. imitation of prosodic aspects of the


participants’ speech) virtual agent on individuals’ interpersonal relation with it (Suzuki,

Takeuchi, Ishii, & Okada, 2003).

Not only do individuals’ subjective evaluations and feelings appear to be altered

due to mimicry behavior, also positive behavioral modifications can be observed. Van

Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, and Van Knippenberg (2004, Experiment 1) found that

participants in an experimental session were more likely to pick up one or several of six

pens that the experimenter “accidentally” dropped if they were previously mimicked

behaviorally by the experimenter (during a task to disguise the real purpose of the

study) as compared to when they were not. Whereas this study focused on implicit

helping behavior (i.e. helping spontaneously), Guéguen, Martin, and Meineri (2011)

assessed whether these effects could be extended to helping behavior regarding explicit

helping requests. In this study participants were mimicked behaviorally (or not, in the

control condition) by a female confederate (who acted as a participant) during an

experimental session in which they had to discuss their opinions regarding an irrelevant

topic. Upon leaving the experiment, the confederate explained to the participant that she

was required to ask someone she did not know to evaluate a written essay for a French

course. The confederate asked the participant if she could help her with this assignment

and that she would need the essay back within 48 hours. Imitated participants were

more likely to comply with this request than non imitated participants were, suggesting

that behavioral mimicry can also lead to increased prosocial behavior on explicit

helping requests. Another study found that increased helping behavior on explicit

requests can also be observed after verbal mimicry (Müller, Maaskant, Van Baaren, &

Dijksterhuis, 2012); verbally imitated individuals were more likely to accompany a

stranger during a walk to the train station, which took as much as 15 to 20 minutes, than

non-imitated individuals were.

Although critics argue that these effects would be brought about by the improved

rapport between interlocutors after conversing and that therefore these effects would be

partner-specific (e.g. Guéguen et al., 2011), several studies aimed (and succeeded) to

provide results suggesting otherwise (e.g. Ashton-James et al., 2007; Van Baaren,

Holland, et al., 2004). Van Baaren, Holland, and their colleagues (2004, Experiment 2)


were the first to assess this specific question, and found positive effects of behavioral

mimicry towards third persons as well. In an experiment similar to the one described

previously in this section (in which the experimenter dropped several pens; Van Baaren,

Holland, et al., 2004, Experiment 1) it was found that also when another researcher

entered the room and dropped the pens, mimicry seemed to lead to increased

helpfulness as measured by an increased likelihood to pick up the pen(s). Thus, the

prosocial consequences of being mimicked appeared to reach beyond the imitator.

Similar results were found in a comparable third experiment in which the dependent

variable was the amount of money donated to charity at the end of the session. Not only

donated participants in the mimicry condition more often money than participants in the

non-mimicry condition did, they also donated a larger amount of money than

participants that were not mimicked by the experimenter did. Similar results of

increased prosocial behavior towards others in general after mimicry were found by

Ashton-James and her colleagues (2007), who found that individuals that were

mimicked during an experimental session were more likely to fill out an extra

questionnaire for another researcher voluntarily than were individuals that were not

imitated.

Another study showed that after being mimicked behaviorally individuals tend to

show increased closeness towards people in general and towards unknown others as

well, not only towards the interlocutor (Van Baaren & Chartrand, 2005). In two

experiments participants’ movements and mannerisms were imitated by the

experimenter during a task in which participants had to rate a series of advertisements.

In the first experiment it was found that imitated individuals rated their feelings of

closeness towards people in general higher than did individuals that were not imitated,

whereas the second experiment resulted in similar findings regarding actual behavior

towards an unknown individual. In this second experiment participants were asked -

after the mimicry session - to take a seat in a waiting room in which one seat seemed to

be occupied, as feigned by the presence of personal items such as a coat, a bag, and

some documents. The distance of the seat of the participant’s choice to the occupied seat

would indicate the participant’s preference of closeness to the unidentified individual,


an inventive measure that was introduced in a earlier study by Holland, Roeder, Van

Baaren, Brandt, and Hannover (2004). As expected, imitated individuals chose a seat

closer to the occupied seat than did individuals that were not imitated, suggesting an

increased preference of being close to unknown others. In sum, the studies discussed

above seem to provide compelling findings that being imitated behaviorally results in

more prosocial behavior to the imitator, and additionally that this effect might be

generalized to third parties as well.

Similarly, being mimicked verbally appears to enhance one’s prosociality as well

(e.g. Kulesza, Dolinski, Huisman, & Majewski, 2013; Van Baaren, Holland, et al.,

2003). An inventive and naturalistic study that reflected the consequences of being

mimicked semantically (i.e. having your utterances repeated) was carried out by Van

Baaren, Holland, et al. (2003). In this experiment customers’ orders were or were not

repeated by a waitress immediately after taking their orders. Interestingly, the waitress

received significantly more often tips when she copied the customers’ words as

compared to when she did not copy them. Additionally, the average amount of money

tipped was higher after verbal mimicry as well. A follow-up study by Jacob and

Guéguen (2013) emphasized the strength of this effect. In this study a similar paradigm

as in Van Baaren, Holland, et al.’s research (2003) was applied, except for the

adaptation of a delayed mimicry condition. More specifically, also in this study the

waitress mimicked the customers’ orders in the experimental condition, however, she

only did this when she delivered the customers’ drinks to the table. In the control

condition no verbal mimicry was present. The results demonstrated that even after non-

immediate mimicry of customers’ orders an increased frequency and amount of tipping

could be observed, as compared to situations where no verbal imitation was existent.

Thus, the authors conclude that being mimicked verbally might enhance people’s

generosity.

Kulesza and his colleagues (2013) found similar positive effects of verbal

mimicry towards third persons in an experiment carried out in a currency exchange

office in Poland. In this field experiment customers’ currency exchange request was

imitated (or not) by the cashier, who would ask the customer to donate money to a


charity project after the transaction was made. In this study special attention was

attributed to the exact implementation of the conditions, since an earlier study indicated

that engaging in dialogue can already be sufficient to elicit an increase in prosocial

behavior (Dolinski, Nawrat, & Rudak, 2001). Therefore, argued Kulesza et al., in many

mimicry studies there might be a confound between mimicry and dialogue since in

mimicry conditions there are often more aspects of dialogue present than in non-

mimicry conditions. That is, mimicry conditions usually consist of repeating the

interlocutors message (such as for example in Van Baaren, Holland et al., 2003, and in

Jacob & Guéguen, 2013), whereas in non-mimicry conditions often only a sign of

having received the message is provided. Thus, in order to study the unique effects of

mimicry on prosocial behavior, aspects of dialogue should be kept as constant as

possible over conditions, argued Kulesza and his colleagues. Their extensive field

experiment included five different conditions: two mimicry conditions (one in which the

exact message was repeated, and one in which the same words were employed but in a

different order), one dialogue condition (in which the response consisted of the same

number of words as the message of the customer), and two control conditions (one in

which only ‘okay’ or a similar response was provided, and one in which the cashier did

not respond at all). The main finding of relevance here was that the effects of mimicry

could not be reduced to the effects of dialogue: customers in both mimicry conditions

donated more money to charity than did customers in the dialogue condition.

Additionally, they found that customers in the dialogue condition in their turn made

more donations than customers in the control conditions did, which is in accordance

with Dolinski and his colleagues’ previous findings (2001) and stresses the importance

of taking aspects of dialogue into consideration when conducting mimicry research.

Another study set out to assess the effects of coupled behavioral and verbal mimicry of

salesmen towards customers (Jacob, Guéguen, Martin, & Boulbry, 2011) and found that

mimicked customers were more likely to adhere to the salesmen’s advice and to have

purchased products in the store. Additionally, mimicked customers gave more positive

evaluations of both the salesmen and the store than did non-mimicked customers.

Although we value this study’s comprehensiveness of assessing many of the findings


we discussed in the previous part of this section highly, in our opinion a downside of

this study is that one can not determine whether both verbal and behavioral mimicry

contributed to these effects, or whether only one of them was responsible for the

increase in positive affect and positive behavior. Fischer-Lokou, Martin, Guéguen, and

Lamy’s research (2011) did take this issue into account in their field experiment in

which passersby were mimicked either verbally or both verbally and behaviorally

during a brief conversation in which they were asked directions by a confederate. After

this inquiry another confederate was asking for money further down the street, of which

it was found that mimicry (either verbally or both behaviorally and verbally) increased

compliance to donate money. Interestingly, no significant difference between these two

mimicry conditions appeared to be present, reflecting a possible absence of any

cumulative effects of verbal and behavioral mimicry. A logical follow-up research

would assess whether also behavioral mimicry alone would be able to induce these

effects.

Also Taylor and Thomas’ study (2008) stressed that verbal mimicry’s positive

effects do not solely arise in artificial experimental sessions but also in real life - though

highly exceptional - situations such as hostage negotiations. More specifically, Taylor

and Thomas examined correlations between Linguistic Style Matching (LSM) and

hostage negotiation outcomes. The term LSM was first coined by Niederhoffer and

Pennebaker (2002) and “rests on the notion that individuals’ use of words and phrases

reflects their global perception of a situation and their explicit concerns and goals at any

moment in time”, according to Taylor and Thomas (2008, p. 4). Thus, the synchronicity

between both interlocutors’ linguistic style would be an important aspect of LSM and

might indicate how harmonious a conversation is. Thomas and Taylor therefore

hypothesized that the level of LSM present in hostage negotiations might be an

explanatory variable regarding the outcome of it. More specifically, the higher the level

of LSM, the more likely a positive outcome would be. Taylor and Thomas analyzed

transcripts of nine hostage situations and concluded that, as hypothesized, successful

negotiations were associated with higher levels of LSM than were unsuccessful

negotiations. Although the results found in this research seem to be in line with


previously discussed studies, we argue that it would not be unlikely that in these

analyses a third variable might have mediated the effects. Recently another study

reported comparable effects regarding confessions in police interrogations (Richardson,

Taylor, Snook, Conchie, & Bennell, 2014). Richardson and her colleagues analyzed

language use in 64 interrogation sessions and found that although overall bidirectional

LSM did not correlate with crime confession, when comparing specifically suspects’

language adaptation towards that of the interrogator it was found that increased LSM

tended to be associated with confession. Having discussed two studies on LSM we wish

to emphasize that LSM presumably has a broader scope than genuine verbal mimicry.

Although we therefore evaluate the results discussed in this section carefully regarding

the current research interests, we intend to illustrate the important role verbal adaptation

in real life communication might have.

Although numerous studies focused on individual differences in mimicry behavior

- as we discussed extensively in the previous section -, only a handful of studies

examined possible modulating factors regarding responses to being mimicked. Stel et al.

(2011) argued that since prosocially oriented individuals value mutual goals highly

whereas proself individuals focus more on their personal goals and gains, this might

cause the latter to be less responsive to mimicry. Prosocial individuals might

(unconsciously) process the mimicking behavior of the interlocutor as an effort to

engage in successful communication, while this might remain unnoticed to proselfs.

Participants were categorized as proself or prosocial based on their behavior in a game

(for more information see Stel et al., 2011) after which they interacted with a

(behaviorally) mimicking or non-mimicking confederate. Prosocially oriented

individuals rated the confederate as more sympathetic when they had been imitated by

him or her, an effect found in numerous studies as discussed previously. For individuals

that were defined as being proself, however, the effects of mimicry on positive

evaluations appeared to be absent, which seems to be in line with Stel and her

colleagues’ hypothesis.

Furthermore, whereas Van Baaren, Maddux, et al. (2003) focused on individuals’

levels of in(ter)dependent self-construal regarding their own mimicry behavior, Leander


et al. (2012) aimed to assess how this aspect might affect responses to being mimicked.

An inventive study was conducted in which reactions to mimicry behavior were

measured implicitly by asking participants to estimate the temperature of the room after

being mimicked nonverbally or not. Research has shown that when social norms or

standards are violated this tends to activate feelings of physical coldness (Bargh &

Shalev, 2012; IJzerman & Semin, 2009; Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008), so that when

individuals are mimicked more or less than they would prefer this would lead to an

underestimation of the room temperature due to the feelings of uncomfortableness that

activate physical coldness, argued Leander and his colleagues. They hypothesized that

individuals with a highly independent self-construal prefer not to be mimicked, which

would be reflected in an underestimation of the room temperature after being mimicked.

Individuals with a highly interdependent self-construal on the other hand value mimicry

behavior highly and would respond negatively to not being mimicked. Results were in

line with these hypotheses, not only showing that levels of in(ter)dependent self-

construal might affect preferences and reactions to being mimicked, but also suggesting

that such preferences are reflected in physical responses. However, as a final note we

argue that these results should be evaluated critically since a recent study (Lynott et al.,

2014) was not able to replicate previous findings regarding the relationship between

subjective temperature and prosocial inclinations (Williams & Bargh, 2008, Experiment

2).

Finally, another study by Vrijsen, Lange, Dotsch, et al. (2010) found that not only

do high socially anxious individuals mimic less than individuals scoring low on anxiety,

a logical consequence is that they also respond less positive to being mimicked than

non-anxious individuals do. In a similar experiment as the one by Vrijsen, Lange,

Becker, and Rinck (2010) we previously described it was found that high socially

anxious participants did not like a mimicking avatar more than a non-mimicking avatar,

while low anxious participants did evaluate the mimicking avatar as more likable. These

results thus suggest a bidirectional pattern: certain traits might not only cause

individuals to display altered levels of mimicry themselves, they might also install a

differential pattern regarding responses to being mimicked by others.


The studies discussed in this section could lead us to conclude that both verbal

and behavioral imitation might lead to increased prosocial behavior towards the

mimicker (Jacob & Guéguen, 2013; Van Baaren, Holland, et al., 2003) and towards

third parties (Kulesza et al., 2013; Van Baaren, Holland, et al., 2004; for a

comprehensive review on findings up to date see also Hale & Hamilton, 2016).

Additionally, several individual difference aspects, such as prosociality (Stel et al.,

2011) and social anxiety (Vrijsen, Lange, Dotsch, et al., 2010), are found to affect

responses to behavioral mimicry. As far as we are aware however, no studies have

assessed these prosocial effects regarding syntactic mimicry specifically, neither have

researchers investigated the role of individual differences regarding responding to

verbal imitation. As will be clear after the next section, this will be two of the

innovative aspects of the current study.

The current study: the relationship between mimicry and personality factors

After having discussed different forms of (verbal) mimicry and several of its

predictors and consequences, we have arrived at our current objective of study. Here our

focus was twofold: first, we aimed to extend previous research on the prosocial

consequences of verbal imitation. However, in contrast to previous studies we

investigated the extent to which these effects arise with syntactic mimicry (instead of

semantic mimicry as is usually applied, see for example Jacob & Guéguen, 2013,

Kulesza et al., 2013, and Van Baaren, Holland, et al., 2003) in order to assess whether

such findings are generalizable to other verbal properties as well. Additionally, whereas

most studies focused on prosocial behavior towards the interlocutor, we wished to

analyze whether these effects can be found regarding prosocial behavior towards third

persons in an experimental setting. Several studies already found general prosocial

effects of verbal imitation in naturalistic experiments (e.g. Kulesza et al., 2013; Müller

et al., 2012), however, as far as we are aware no studies on the prosocial consequences

of verbal imitation towards others in general have been conducted in controlled

experiments in which specific utterances can be evoked and mimicked. A second

research aim was to systematically investigate how both syntactic imitation and

syntactic imitation’s prosocial effects might be related to Big Five personality factors,


since previous studies suggested that individual differences might play a role in mimicry

behavior. Towards this end, we implemented an experiment in which the first part

examined the role of Big Five factors on active mimicry by the participants themselves,

while the second part studied the relationship between participants’ scores on the Big

Five and their prosocial behavior towards a third person after being mimicked

syntactically. Based on the previously discussed studies we hypothesized that syntactic

mimicry – as compared to syntactic non-mimicry – leads to increased prosocial

behavior towards third parties, and that overall individuals do tend to imitate the

confederate’s dative structure (i.e. prepositional object dative and double object dative,

for examples see Bock’s study discussed previously [1986]). Given the relative

sparseness and contradicting findings of studies assessing the role of Big Five

personality factors in verbal imitation and its consequences, we do not consider

ourselves in the position of formulating specific predictions regarding the question how

Big Five personality factors might relate to both active verbal mimicry and the possible

prosocial consequences of being mimicked verbally, and therefore emphasize the

current study’s explorative role regarding these aspects. However, we do support the

previously discussed suggestion that the desire to affiliate might be one of the main

underlying traits that affects mimicry behavior and individuals’ responses to it. One

might then expect that for example the factor of Extraversion could be of significance

here because of extraverted individuals’ relatively high levels of sociability (Gosling,

Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003). Higher levels of Extraversion might then be associated with

increased levels of verbal alignment because of extraverts’ desire to affiliate with the

interlocutor. Similarly, these individuals might also respond positively to being

mimicked since this might be interpreted as an effort of the interlocutor to communicate

at the same level and to affiliate. On the other hand, Big Five personality factors that are

less related to affiliation preferences, such as Conscientiousness and Openness, are

expected not to play a role in mimicry behavior. Nevertheless, once again we stress that

given the apparent lack of consistent findings in previous studies we wish to explore the

possible effects with an open view. If one or several of the Big Five factors appear to

have a significant effect on verbal mimicry, future research might concentrate on the


further specification of which subaspects of the factor(s) play a crucial role in these

processes and whether individuals’ desire to affiliate is indeed related to this.

Returning to the specifics of the current experiments, all participants were

subjected to both parts of the study, which were carried out with the help of a female

confederate. Participants were instructed to perform a picture description task together

with “another participant” (i.e. the confederate; cfr. Branigan et al., 2000). Both the

participant and the confederate were asked to alternately describe pictures that were

displayed on their computer screen to the other person, who would verify whether or not

the same picture was shown on her screen. In the first part of the study we measured the

proportion of the confederate’s sentence structures (either PO or DO) that were imitated

by the participant. In the second part the experimental set up was equal to the first part

except for the fact that turns changed and now the confederate did (in the experimental

condition) or did not (in the control condition) purposefully imitate the syntactic

structure as applied by the participant. Then, to measure participants’ degree of

prosocial behavior towards third parties we offered them another researcher’s

questionnaire of which they could freely decide whether and for how long they wished

to complete it. For more details we refer to the Procedure section of Experiment 2. The

two experiments followed each other as if it were one experiment consisting of two

blocks; participants were not aware of the shift in research purposes. We linked the

results of both parts of the study to participants’ scores on the NEO Five Factor

Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992), a Big Five questionnaire.

Experiment 1

As was set out previously, in the first of two experiments we aimed to

investigate the role of Big Five personality factors on the extent to which people engage

in syntactic mimicry in a picture description task carried out with a confederate.

Method

Participants. Forty-one Caucasian female participants were included in this

experiment. Participants could sign up online for the experiment through the

university’s experiment schedule system. They were paid €10 for their 60 minutes of

participation and were required to have Dutch as their native language. Ages ranged


from 18 to 47 years (M = 23.49, SD = 5.33 years). Unbeknownst to the participants,

they performed a task in alternation with a confederate of the experimenter. A 22-year

old female confederate fulfilled the role of the student with whom participants

performed the task. She was kept as blind as possible regarding the research purposes.

Only female participants were included in this study in order to minimize

possible gender effects. Since studies suggest that a larger similarity among

interlocutors is associated with increased levels of mimicry (Guéguen, Martin, & Vion,

2009; Yabar et al., 2006), including both male and female participants could have

structurally biased the results of Experiment 1.

Participants were asked to fill out the informed consent. For reasons of

credibility also the confederate filled out an informed consent.

Materials. Two sets of item lists were created; one for the confederate and one

for the participant. The stimuli included were adopted from Hartsuiker et al.’s study

(2008), who in their turn applied a translation of an item set created by Branigan et al.

(2000). The experimental session was created using E-Prime 2.0 software (Psychology

Software Tools, Pittsburgh, PA).

The item list of the confederate consisted of 24 prime sentences and 48 filler

sentences (see Appendix A and Appendix B respectively). Each prime sentence and each

filler sentence was used only once. Half of the prime sentences consisted of

prepositional object (PO) constructions, while the remaining half was formulated as a

double object (DO) construction. An example of a PO sentence would be “De dokter

verkoopt een appel aan de monnik” (“The doctor sells an apple to the monk”), whereas

the DO version of this sentence would be “De dokter verkoopt de monnik een

appel” (“The doctor sells the monk an apple”). For the exact properties of PO and DO

structures we refer to the Scoring section further on in this Method section. Six different

verbs were used in the prime sentences, each one being included four times (verkopen,

overhandigen, schenken, geven, tonen, laten zien; in English: to sell, to hand, to give, to

give, to show, to show ). Every verb was used in both a DO prime sentence and a PO 3

In Dutch, there is a small nuance difference between schenken and geven, and tonen and laten zien. For 3

a more detailed account, see Hartsuiker et al. (2008).


prime sentence twice, one time matching the participant’s target picture and one time

not matching the participant’s target picture. Twelve of the 48 filler items consisted of

sentences comprising an intransitive verb (e.g. “The pirate walks”), while the remaining

36 filler items were sentences with a transitive structure (e.g. “The nun kisses the

monk”). The item list of the participant consisted of 24 target pictures and 48 filler

pictures (see Appendix A and Appendix B respectively). Again, each target picture and

each filler picture was used only once. In all of these pictures one or two persons were

depicted with the subscription of a verb. As in the confederate’s item list, the target

pictures could be described by either a DO sentence structure or a PO sentence

structure. The same target verbs as those in the confederate’s item list were included,

each of them appearing four times. Also in the participant’s item list the filler items

consisted of 12 pictures accompanied by an intransitive verb and of 36 pictures

accompanied by a transitive verb.

Every third trial of the confederate contained a prime sentence and consequently

every third trial of the participant encompassed a target picture. The participant’s target

picture always depicted a different verb than the one applied by the confederate on the

previous (prime) trial. Since previous research has demonstrated that there appears to be

no effect of the amount of fillers between prime and target on the strength of the

mimicry effect if there are different verbs assigned to prime and target (Hartsuiker et al.,

2008), we decided to exclusively include a direct target condition in order to keep the

experiment as uncomplicated as possible. Of each of the two lists – one for the

participant and one for the confederate – a counterbalanced list was created in which

only the use of PO and DO prime sentences was reversed (i.e. the meaning of the

sentence was kept identical, only the use of a PO/DO prime was shifted), to ensure that

possible effects of certain verbs preferring one of both sentence structures would be

minimized.

Additionally, participants were offered the Dutch version of the Big Five

questionnaire NEO-FFI (Dutch version by Hoekstra, Ormel, & De Fruyt, 1996; see

Appendix C). The NEO-FFI was originally developed in English by Costa and McCrae

(1992) and is a shortened version of the more extensive NEO Personality Inventory


(NEO-PI; 1985) and the NEO Personality Inventory revised (NEO-PI-R; 1990). The

NEO-FFI is a 60-item questionnaire which scores individuals on the five main

personality factors of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness (to experience) - hence NEO

–, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Participants can indicate on a 5-point scale to

what extent they agree with the items. Reliability measures of the Dutch version of the

NEO-FFI vary between α = 0.68 and α = 0.86 (De Fruyt & Mervielde, 1998). It takes

approximately ten to fifteen minutes to complete the questionnaire. See Table 1 for

participants’ mean scores on the NEO-FFI.

Table 1

Means and standard deviations of participants’ scores on the NEO-FFI

Note. Every factor has a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 48.

Procedure. The participants and the confederate were asked to await the

experimenter in the waiting area near the university’s testing rooms. As mentioned

before, all participants were tested individually but were led to believe that they would

perform a task together with another participant. The participant and the confederate

were seated in front of a computer that was put backwards to the other’s computer. The

experimenter was seated in the corner of the room.

First, the participant and the confederate were asked to complete the paper

version of the NEO-FFI. The confederate was instructed to act out this procedure as

naturally as possible. We explicitly decided to administer the NEO-FFI prior to the

picture description task and not afterwards since previous research has shown that

mimicry might affect certain individual difference aspects, such as self-consciousness

Mean Standard deviation Range

Neuroticism 22.44 7.06 5-35

Extraversion 31.77 6.26 15-44

Openness 27.44 6.29 10-41

Conscientiousness 31.46 7.14 13-44

Agreeableness 30.41 4.52 19-37


and social anxiety (Guéguen, 2011). Therefore, it would not be unlikely that being

mimicked (in Experiment 2) would distort participants’ scores on the NEO-FFI if we

would administer the questionnaire only afterwards. Secondly, after administration of

the NEO-FFI the actual experimental task started. Participants were told that they would

carry out a picture description task and that the session would be recorded for analysis

purposes. In this task, the participant and the confederate alternately described a picture

appearing in the centre of their screen and the other person had to verify (by pressing 1

[“yes”] or 2 [“no”] on the keyboard) whether or not the picture shown on her screen was

identical to the description. After pressing 1 or 2 the roles changed. Hence, the

participant thought that the confederate was describing pictures as well, while in reality

she was reading prime sentences aloud. The confederate was always first to describe the

picture, so that - as was briefly mentioned previously in the Materials section – every

confederate’s dative prime sentence (i.e. target trials, every third trial) was followed by

a target trial for the participant in which a picture that could be described by either using

a PO sentence structure or a DO sentence structure was displayed. Experiment 1 took

approximately 25 minutes to complete.

Scoring. Recordings of the sessions were transcribed and target trials were

coded as either PO, DO, or “other”. Responses were coded as PO if the verb was

followed by the direct object and if additionally the preposition “to” and the indirect

object were placed after the direct object. Responses in which the indirect object was

placed after the verb, which in its turn was followed by the direct object, were encoded

as DO. Trials in which participants put the preposition and the indirect object after the

verb (e.g. “The nun gives to the soldier the book”), trials in which the indirect object

was not included in the description, and trials that did not contain the required verb

were encoded as “other”. Incorrect naming of the objects or persons in the pictures was

permitted since this was irrelevant regarding the current research purposes.

Results

Data of two participants were excluded from all analyses due to not meeting the

requirements for participation (i.e. not having Dutch as mother tongue). Six trials out of

the total of 936 trials (0.6%) were coded as “other” and were therefore removed from


our dataset. Of the remaining 930 trials, 765 (82.3%) were coded as PO and 165

(17.7%) were coded as DO.

Data were analyzed applying mixed logit models, which are highly suitable for

the analysis of categorical or binomial data (Jaeger, 2008) and predict the logit

transformed likelihood of a certain outcome, in our case the likelihood of a DO

response. Since on target trials only PO structures or DO structures are possible dative

use is complementary; analyzing and reporting the proportion of PO use too would not

be meaningful (Branigan et al., 2000, p. B20). An advantage of using mixed models

over subject and item analyses of variance (ANOVAs) is that mixed models are capable

of including random effects for both subjects and items simultaneously in one single

model, whereas this is not possible when applying ANOVAs (for a more thorough

discussion on the preference of mixed models over ANOVAs see Jaeger, 2008). As

recommended by Barr, Levy, Scheepers, and Tilly (2013) we constructed a model with

the maximal random effects structure as justified by the data. In this model random

intercepts for subjects and items, and random by-subject and by-item slopes for Prime

were included. The fixed effects consisted of Prime (DO or PO) and participants’

rescaled scores on Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and

Conscientiousness. Additionally, interaction terms between Prime and each of the five

factors were added, which were of main interest in the current experiment. Due to

convergence issues of this model we removed the correlation parameter between the

random slopes and the random intercepts as suggested by Barr et al. (2013, p. 16). Since

this did not solve the model’s non-convergence, we followed Barr and his colleagues’

next step and removed the random intercept for within-unit factors, which did not lead

to a converging model either. Our last attempt was to stepwisely remove the random

effects with the smallest variances until the model would converge. However, this did

not lead to a successfully converging mixed model either. We therefore decided to

include all random effects back into the model and removed the fixed effects with the

smallest effects until the model converged. This led us to a model consisting of fixed

effects for Prime, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and an

interaction between Prime and Extraversion. However, since not the main effects of Big


Five personality factors on dative use but rather how they interact with prime type was

our point of focus, we checked whether a simpler model with only fixed effects for

Prime, Extraversion, and the interaction between them would have a better fit than the

previously mentioned model. We based this model comparison on the models’ Akaike

information criterion (AIC; Akaike, 1973). AIC values are often used in model selection

and give an indication of the relative goodness of fit of different models regarding the

data (in which lower values reflect a better fit). Since the simpler model resulted in a

lower AIC value (625.3) than the more extensive model did (629.9), we decided to

adopt the simpler model. As mentioned previously, random intercepts for subjects and

items, and random by-subject and by-item slopes for Prime were included. Data were

analyzed using R software (version 0.99.465, R Foundation for Statistical Computing,

2015) and its package lme4 (Bates, Maechler, & Bolker, 2011).

The results of the model are summarized in Table 2. A significant main effect of

Prime was observed, which was induced by a larger use of DO structures after DO

primes (24.3%) than after PO primes (11.2%; see also Figure 1), a significant priming

effect of 13.1%. Additionally, a significant interaction between Prime and Extraversion

was found. To investigate this effect into more detail each participant was assigned an

imitation score, which was defined as the proportion of DO use after DO primes minus

the proportion of DO use after PO primes. This imitation score was then plotted against

participants’ Extraversion scores, which resulted in a correlation of r = -.20 (95% CI [-.

49, .12]; see Figure 2). Thus, more extraverted individuals tended to imitate the

confederate’s sentence structures less than did individuals scoring low on Extraversion.

Finally, although not of main interest in this study, we found that levels of Extraversion

did not appear to affect DO use.


Table 2

Results model Experiment 1

Note: N = 930, log-likelihood = -302.6

Note. DO = double object, PO = prepositional object

Figure 1. Proportion (and 95% confidence interval) of DO responses per prime type.

Predictor Coefficient SE Wald Z p

Intercept -2.71 2.32 -1.17 .243

Prime -3.03 1.02 -2.97 .003

Extraversion -0.02 0.70 -0.03 .978

Prime x Extraversion 0.68 0.29 2.37 .018

Prop

ortio

n D

O r

espo

nses

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

DO PO


Figure 2. Relationship between levels of Extraversion and imitation.

Discussion

In Experiment 1 we aimed to replicate previous findings of syntactic mimicry in

a picture description paradigm carried out with a confederate (e.g. Branigan et al., 2000;

Hartsuiker et al., 2008), and additionally addressed the question whether Big Five

personality factors might play a role in the extent to which these effects arise. As in

many previous studies, our results suggested the presence of syntactic mimicry (in

Dutch). Although we did find a (weak but significant) effect of levels of the Big Five

factor of Extraversion on mimicry behavior, these results were in the opposite direction

as we would have presumed. Whereas we would have expected to find higher levels of

alignment among individuals scoring high on Extraversion because of their larger desire

to affiliate with the interlocutor, we in fact found lower levels of alignment among

extraverts. These findings contradict several previous studies (e.g. Gill et al., 2004;

Kurzius, 2015); Kurzius for example found increased verbal mimicry in individuals

scoring high on Extraversion. The current results are also in contrast with Gill et al.’s

Imita

tion

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Extraversion0 10 20 30 40 50

R² = 0.0414


study (2004) in which no effects of Extraversion on verbal mimicry were found at all.

Especially this latter discrepancy is remarkable. The opposition in findings between our

study and Kurzius’ study might be attributable to disparities in the (verbal) aspect being

investigated. That is, whereas we studied syntactic mimicry, Kurzius focused on speech

rate adaptation. Gill and his colleagues, however, concentrated on the effects of

personality on syntactic mimicry as we did, but did not find any significant effects of

Extraversion on mimicry behavior. Even if we would disregard previously found results

because of their (minor) differences with our experimental design, the present findings

of a negative correlation between levels of Extraversion and imitation are still

remarkable given the concept of Extraversion. Introverts, those who score low on

Extraversion, tend to be characterized by a relatively high independence regarding their

social world (Rothmann & Coetzer, 2003). Extraverts on the other hand tend to be

highly engaged in their external world and aim to affiliate with their surrounding others.

One would then expect extraverts to be affected more by their interlocutor’s choice of

syntactic structure than introverts would be. Instead, we found introverts to be more

susceptible to mimicry than extraverts.

We therefore suggest that perhaps not Extraversion per se, but rather its complex

interplay with other influencing variables might play a role in mimicry behavior. Similar

to Duffy and Chartrand’s study previously discussed (2015), in which not Extraversion

by itself but rather its interaction with motivation to affiliate appeared to play a crucial

role in mimicry behavior, a certain interplay might also have been present in the current

study. Future studies should therefore not only assess which personality aspects might

affect mimicry, but they should also offer possible frameworks of how, why, and when

they affect this behavior in order to be able to explain possible discrepancies found in

mimicry studies and in order to get more insight in these apparent complex mechanisms

(as was also done by Kurzius & Borkenau, 2015). As Klein et al. (2012) argue,

especially in studies that take place in a social context researchers should aim to

acknowledge and document the role a specific environment might have. It would not be

unlikely that such disparities in social contexts and differences in participants’


expectations between studies might be accountable for contrasting findings in mimicry

studies.

Experiment 2

As briefly discussed before, in a second experiment we examined the role of Big

Five personality factors on the prosocial effects towards third parties after being

mimicked syntactically.

Method

Participants. After finishing Experiment 1, all participants also took part in

Experiment 2. Half of this group of participants was included in the mimicry condition,

while the other half was included in the non-mimicry condition. Participants were not

aware of the shift in the aim of study; to them it rather seemed the second block of the

first experiment.

As in Experiment 1, regarding the research objectives of Experiment 2 it was

essential to include same-sex participants only. A study by Leander, Chartrand, and

Wood (2011) showed that being mimicked (behaviorally) might induce participants to

act in accordance with certain stereotypes. Thus, different stereotypes might be evoked

in male participants than in female participants as a consequence of the mimicry

present. Since this might distort or complicate the results regarding participants’ levels

of prosocial behavior, this was a second reason to include only female participants in

our experiments.

Materials. The stimuli of Experiment 2 were equal to those used in Experiment

1. Again the participant’s and confederate’s target trials followed each other

immediately and always contained a different verb than the one that was included in the

other’s trial. The stimuli were presented in a different order than in Experiment 1.

Procedure. After completing Experiment 1, all participants were presented with

Experiment 2.

This time, the real participant was instructed to describe the first picture. As in

the first experiment, every third trial was a target trial, but now the participant’s target

trial always preceded the confederate’s target trial, in contrast to the set up of

Experiment 1 in which the participant’s target trial always followed the confederate’s


target trial. In the mimicry condition of Experiment 2 the confederate adapted her dative

use in every third trial to that of the participant. Thus, if the participant for example used

a PO sentence structure on her third trial, the confederate also used a PO sentence

structure on her third trial. Instead, in the non-mimicry condition the confederate

applied the opposing sentence structure as the one used by the participant. Thus, if the

participant for example used a PO sentence structure on her third trial, the confederate

used a DO sentence structure instead on her third trial. To facilitate this procedure for

the confederate, on critical trials both sentences that could have been applied by the

participant on the previous trial were displayed together with the appropriate target

sentences to read aloud by the confederate (i.e. the same structures in the mimicry

condition and the opposing structures in the non-mimicry condition). This way the

confederate could easily determine which sentence she had to apply and the possibility

of confusion was minimized.

After completion of the second part of the experiment, the confederate was told

to go to the adjacent room where a colleague of the experimenter would await her for

further instructions on a final task. In reality the confederate’s task was finished and she

should leave the room in order not to influence the participant regarding the final task.

Namely, the participant was told that her part of the experiment was already finished,

but that another researcher was conducting a study for which word lists had to be rated

on their age of acquisition. Since this is a time-consuming task, he or she would be very

pleased with a little help of many students. Especially since there was always some time

left, every bit of help participants could offer would be very much appreciated. It was

emphasized that participants could complete the list as far and as long as they wished to

and that if they preferred not to participate in this task they were free to decline. We

measured the time participants were willing to spend on the task; due to time constraints

we set the maximum time to spend on the task to 13 minutes. The time spent on the task

might be a more valid indicator of prosocial behavior than the number of words rated

since there might be a high variability among participants regarding their pace of rating

the words. The word lists we offered participants were originally used in a study by

Brysbaert, Stevens, De Deyne, Voorspoels, and Storms (2014) and were kindly provided


for use in the current research. Rates on this list were not used for further research

purposes; the only purpose of the list was to quantify participants’ prosocial

inclinations.

Importantly, this second experiment was required to be double blind because if

the experimenter would know that a participant was included in the mimicry condition,

she might (unintentionally) do more effort to let the participant fill out the questionnaire

afterwards. Such experimenter effects have been observed in previous studies and have

been shown to be a possible issue in psychology research (Doyen, Klein, Pichon, &

Cleeremans, 2012). To overcome this issue the files of the sessions were coded

beforehand in such a way that the experimenter did not know at the time of

administration which condition was applied in that specific session. Through the

presentation of the appropriate sentences on the computer screen the confederate would

know whether or not she had to mimic the participant. The experimenter listened to

music during the session in order not to hear whether the confederate imitated the

participant’s sentence structures or not. The recording of the session enabled later

analysis of the results.

Experiment 2 lasted for approximately 15 minutes (without the extra task).

Given the fact that Experiment 1 took approximately 25 minutes to complete, every

participant should have had around 20 minutes left to spend on the task since they were

informed that the experiment would last for 60 minutes. After finishing the extra task,

participants were questioned about possible suspicions regarding the experiment. None

of the participants guessed the purposes of the experiment correctly and all were

debriefed about the content of the study.

Scoring. The task (not) to imitate the participant was not always carried out

successfully by the confederate. With two participants she applied an incorrect structure

twice, and with four participants she applied an incorrect structure once. In some of

these cases incorrect imitation was caused by the use of an incorrect structure by the

participant. Given the total number of 24 target trials we regarded these deviances as

small and decided to accept them.


Results

Data of two participants (one in the imitation condition and one in the no

imitation condition) were excluded from all analyses due to not meeting the

requirements for participation (i.e. not having Dutch as mother tongue; the same

participants as those in Experiment 1). As in Experiment 1, a PO bias appeared to be

present: on 796 out of the total of 936 trials (85.0%) participants produced a PO

structure, whereas on only 135 trials DO structures were used (14.4%). Five trials were

coded as “other” (0.5%). Means and standard deviations (in seconds) per condition on

the time participants spent on the extra task are reported in Table 3. In both the imitation

condition and the no imitation condition nine participants worked the maximum time

available on the extra task (i.e. 13 minutes), an issue to which we will return later.

Table 3

Average time and standard deviation of the time spent on the extra task by Condition

As in the previous experiment, data were analyzed using R. A between-subjects

ANOVA was conducted in which Condition (imitation, no imitation), each of the five

factors, and their interactions with Condition were included as predictors. The time

spent on the extra task constituted the dependent variable as a measure of prosocial

behavior. No significant main effect of Condition on prosocial behavior was found, F(1,

27) = 0.557, p = .462, ηp2 = .002. However, two marginally significant interactions

between Condition and Big Five personality factors appeared to be present; both the

interaction between Condition and Extraversion, F(1, 27) = 3.626, p = .068, ηp2 = .118,

and the interaction between Condition and Neuroticism, F(1, 27) = 3.716, p = .064, ηp2

= .121, reached marginal significance. The interaction between Condition and

Extraversion suggested that in the imitation condition higher levels of Extraversion

tended to be associated with more time spent on the extra task, whereas in the no

Mean Standard deviation

Imitation (n = 19) 648 154

No imitation (n = 20) 653 148


imitation condition higher levels of Extraversion were associated with less time spent

on the extra task (see Figure 3). Similar results were found regarding the interaction

between imitation and Neuroticism: in the imitation condition higher levels of

Neuroticism tended to be associated with more time spent on the extra task, whereas in

the no imitation condition participants with higher levels of Neuroticism tended to

spend less time on the extra task (see Figure 4). The interactions between Condition and

Openness, F(1, 27) = 0.108, p = .745, ηp2 = .004, between Condition and Agreeableness,

F(1, 27) = 0.609, p = .442, ηp2 = .022, and between Condition and Conscientiousness,

F(1, 27) = 0.289, p = .596, ηp2 = .011, did not reach (marginal) significance.

Figure 3. Relationship between levels of Extraversion and time spent on the extra task

by Condition.

Tim

e sp

ent o

n ex

tra

task

400

550

700

850

1000

Extraversion15 20 25 30 35 40 45

No imitation Imitation


Figure 4. Relationship between levels of Neuroticism and time spent on the extra task

by Condition.

Although not our primary focus, for reasons of comprehensiveness we also

report the main effects of Big Five personality factors on prosocial behavior, of which

none reached significance. Neuroticism: F(1, 27) = 0.027, p = .871, ηp2 = .007;

Extraversion: F(1, 27) = 0.367, p = .550, ηp2 = .021; Openness: F(1, 27) = 0.703, p = .

409, ηp2 = .041; Agreeableness: F(1, 27) = 0.309, p = .583, ηp2 = .011;

Conscientiousness: F(1, 27) = 0.900, p = .351, ηp2 = .035. We will review the absence of

an effect of Big Five personality factors on prosocial behavior in the Discussion.

In order to ensure that the previously mentioned PO bias did not affect imitation

effects, an ANOVA was performed in which additionally participants’ proportion of PO

production and its interaction with Condition were included. Neither the main effect of

PO production on prosocial behavior nor the interaction between PO production and

Condition reached significance, F(1, 25) = 0.892, p = .354, ηp2 = .011 and F(1, 25) =

0.909, p = .349, ηp2 = .035 respectively, suggesting that the absence of a significant main

Tim

e sp

ent o

n ex

tra

task

400

550

700

850

1000

Neuroticism5 10 15 20 25 30 35

No imitation Imitation


effect of imitation on prosocial behavior was not caused by participants’ repetitive use

of PO datives.

Additionally, since ceiling effects appeared to be present (18 participants spent

the maximum time available on the extra task), we explored how results might alter

when we would exclude participants who spent the maximum time on the task.

However, because of the small sample size (after exclusion: n = 10 in the imitation

condition and n = 11 in the no imitation condition) we stress that this is only by means

of exploration. Excluding these 18 participants, also here no significant main effect of

imitation on prosocial behavior was observed, F(1, 9) = 2.651, p = .138, ηp2 = .005

(imitation: M = 528, SD = 118, no imitation: M = 545, SD = 122). As in the original

analysis - in which all participants were included - a marginally significant interaction

between Condition and Extraversion was found, F(1, 9) = 4.368, p = .066, ηp2 = .327.

The interaction between Condition and Neuroticism, however, did not reach (marginal)

significance in the current analysis, F(1, 9) = 2.526, p = .146, ηp2 = .219, nor did the

interactions between Condition and Openness, F(1, 9) = 0.899, p = .368, ηp2 = .091,

between Condition and Agreeableness, F(1, 9) = 2.441, p = .153, ηp2 = .213, and

between Condition and Conscientiousness, F(1, 9) = 0.289, p = .596, ηp2 = .042. Also, as

previously, no significant main effects of Big Five personality factors on prosocial

behavior were found, Neuroticism: F(1, 9) = 0.071, p = .935, ηp2 = .040; Extraversion:

F(1, 9) = 1.668, p = .229, ηp2 = .076; Openness: F(1, 9) = 0.529, p = .485, ηp2 = .037;

Agreeableness: F(1, 9) = 0.026, p = .875, ηp2 = .007; Conscientiousness: F(1, 9) =

1.344, p = .276, ηp2 = .097.

Discussion

In a picture description paradigm in which a confederate either mimicked or

non-mimicked the participant’s choice of dative structure no effects of verbal mimicry

on prosocial behavior towards third persons were found. We did find, however, a

significant interaction between mimicry and levels of Extraversion, and between

mimicry and levels of Neuroticism. To our surprise no significant main effects of Big

Five personality factors on prosocial behavior, regardless of imitation, were found.


Although to a certain extent the absence of an increase in prosocial behavior

after being mimicked might seem to contrast a very similar previous study in which

positive effects of syntactic mimicry were observed (Abrahams, 2016), this discrepancy

in findings might be easily explainable: whereas the latter study and many other studies

focused on prosocial behavior towards the interlocutor (e.g. Fischer-Lokou et al., 2011;

Jacob & Guéguen, 2013; Van Baaren, Holland, et al., 2003), the present study aimed to

analyze the change in prosocial behavior towards third persons. Although Van Baaren,

Holland, et al. (2004) found that increased prosocial behavior after behavioral mimicry

can also be observed towards third parties, this effect appeared to be of a smaller size

than the effect towards the interlocutor himself. Perhaps this difference in the magnitude

of the effect is even larger with verbal mimicry, which might explain the absence of an

increase in prosocial behavior after verbal mimicry in our study. If we would have

measured prosocial behavior towards the interlocutor results might have been different.

Nevertheless, some other studies - carried out in real world contexts - still report

increased prosocial behavior towards others in general after being mimicked verbally

(e.g. Kulesza et al., 2013). One suggestion might be that in experimental studies verbal

imitation is not sufficiently powerful to increase prosocial behavior towards third

persons, whereas in everyday situations (like in Kulesza’ and his colleagues' study,

2013, and in Müller et al., 2012) it is. Future studies should therefore aim to get a better

understanding of the prosocial consequences of verbal imitation towards both the

interlocutor and towards third persons, and how this might differ between experimental

settings and real life situations.

As reported in the beginning of this section, we found two interesting

interactions between Big Five personality factors and mimicry that appeared to affect

prosocial behavior. These interactions suggested the presence of a positive relationship

both between levels of Extraversion and prosocial behavior, and between levels of

Neuroticism and prosocial behavior after being mimicked syntactically. In the no

imitation condition these relationships appeared to be negative. The finding of a positive

relationship between levels of Extraversion and prosocial behavior after mimicry seems

understandable given the previous suggestion of the role of affiliation in mimicry.


Extraversion is characterized by an enjoyment of interacting with other people and by a

high social engagement among others (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003), and it is

therefore of little surprise that individuals scoring high on this factor respond positively

to being mimicked by someone else. Unwittingly these participants might sense the

confederate’s effort to align on syntactic properties, which could increase levels of

affiliation and consequently prosocial behavior. However, we argue that the positive

relationship between levels of Neuroticism and prosocial behavior after being mimicked

verbally is rather remarkable. An important facet of Neuroticism is the susceptibility to

experience negative emotions, such as anxiety (John, Robins, & Pervin, 2008). Since

Vrijsen, Lange, Dotsch, et al. (2010) found that, as discussed previously, highly anxious

individuals did not respond positively to a mimicking avatar (whereas low anxious

individuals did), in the present study we would have expected individuals scoring high

on Neuroticism to show decreased levels of prosocial behavior after being mimicked. In

contrast, the opposite relationship was found, which might deserve attention in future

studies.

Finally, the absence of any significant main effect of personality factors on

prosocial behavior (regardless of imitation) is noteworthy. Previous studies found

effects of levels of Extraversion and Agreeableness on volunteering (Carlo, Okun,

Knight, & De Guzman, 2005), of levels of Agreeableness on helping behavior

(Graziano, Habashi, Sheese, & Tobin, 2007), and of levels of Extraversion, Openness,

and Agreeableness on prosocial behavior (Kosek, 1995). Another study found that

volunteers scored higher on Agreeableness and Extraversion than did paid workers

(Elshaug & Metzer, 2001). Given these previous findings, one might then expect to find

an effect of one or several of the Big Five personality factors - most likely Extraversion

and Agreeableness - on the time participants were willing to help out another researcher

with an extra task. Although the general effect of personality factors on prosocial

behavior was not our focus, the absence of such a relationship is surprising.

General Discussion

The present study investigated the role of personality in syntactic mimicry and in

syntactic mimicry’s prosocial effects. Recently there has been a trend in research to


focus on the role of individual differences regarding nonverbal mimicry (e.g. Duffy &

Chartrand, 2015; Kurzius & Borkenau, 2015) and its consequences (Leander et al.,

2012; Stel et al., 2011; Vrijsen, Lange, Dotsch, et al., 2010). However, less is known on

how these effects might relate to verbal (syntactic) mimicry. As far as we are aware we

are the first to systematically assess how Big Five personality factors relate to syntactic

mimicry and its effects. As in numerous previous studies (e.g. Branigan et al., 2000;

Hartsuiker et al., 2008) we found dative mimicry in a picture description task that was

carried out with the help of a confederate, and additionally a weak but significant effect

of levels of Extraversion on verbal mimicry was observed. However, these results

contrasted previous studies (e.g. Gill et al., 2004; Kurzius, 2015) by showing that more

extraverted individuals tended to mimic the confederate less than did individuals

scoring low on Extraversion. It was suggested that minor differences between the

current study and previous studies might be responsible for the discrepancy in findings,

however, future research should be conducted to gain more insight in the ongoing

processes. To our surprise we did not find an effect of being mimicked by the

confederate on participants’ prosocial behavior towards third parties. Results did

suggest, however, that both levels of Extraversion and levels of Neuroticism might play

a role in how individuals respond to being mimicked. That is, individuals scoring high

on Extraversion or Neuroticism tended to respond more positively to being mimicked

than individuals scoring low on these factors, as measured by the willingness to help an

unknown individual with an extra task. When not being imitated, however, this pattern

seemed to reverse and findings suggested that prosocial behavior in this situation tends

to decrease as Extraversion or Neuroticism increase.

Not only is it remarkable that individuals scoring high on Extraversion tend to

mimic less than individuals scoring low on Extraversion, even more striking is that

regarding being mimicked opposing effects seem to arise. Simply put, whereas

extraverts display relatively low levels of verbal mimicry themselves, they do respond

more positively to being mimicked than individuals with low levels of Extraversion do.

We would have expected for these effects to point in the same direction, similar to the

effects previously found regarding mimicry in relation to levels of social anxiety


(Vrijsen, Lange, Becker, & Rinck, 2010; Vrijsen, Lange, Dotsch, et al., 2010). As

discussed previously, Vrijsen, Lange, Becker, and Rinck found that high socially

anxious individuals tend to display decreased levels of mimicry. The study by Vrijsen,

Lange, Dotsch and their colleagues in its turn showed that these individuals do not

respond differently to a mimicking avatar than to a non-mimicking avatar, which seems

reasonable given the finding that they show impaired mimicry themselves. Our

contradictory findings, however, are difficult to interpret. One suggestion is that perhaps

Extraversion - or a specific subaspect of it - has a differential effect on active mimicry

by individuals themselves than on being mimicked by others. We will return to this

matter later on in this section when we put forward several directions for future

research.

Our findings of an absence of an increase in prosocial behavior after syntactic

mimicry in Experiment 2 are in line with Kulesza and his colleagues’ claim that

syntactic mimicry would not be sufficiently strong to induce prosocial behavior (2013,

p. 12). The majority of previous studies investigating and finding prosocial effects of

verbal imitation applied lexical mimicry to examine the effects (e.g. Kulesza et al.,

2013; Van Baaren, Holland, et al., 2003). One hypothesis that we put forward here and

which elaborates on Kulesza and his colleagues’ claim is that syntactic mimicry does

not add as much value to the understandability of the conversation as lexical mimicry

does. That is, copying others’ messages or referring to an object with the same word as

one’s interlocutor does (i.e. lexical mimicry) might have beneficial effects for both

conversation partners by increasing alignment and transparency of the dialogue. Or as

Lewis (1969) put it, conversation can be regarded a game in which both players win if

coordination is achieved. If one feels that his or her interlocutor puts effort in

communicating at the same level, this might induce the prosocial effects that are often

found. We argue that syntactic mimicry, however, does not enhance the message’s

intelligibility; it is rather a matter of preference. Therefore, if one is being imitated

syntactically this does not affect interlocutors’ opinions on the degree to which the

conversation parter wishes to cooperate and hence no increase in prosocial behavior

might be observed. Furthermore, Pickering and Garrod (2004) argued that mimicry of


aspects that do not relate to meaning (such as syntax) also contribute to install a

cooperative communication style by enhancing mimicry of meaning related aspects

(such as word use). More simply put, syntactic mimicry might activate lexical mimicry.

However, in the current experiment this might not have been present due to the scripted

language of the confederate; she did indeed mimic the participants’ syntax use,

however, this did not cascade into lexical mimicry as might be the case in more natural

speech. Although the current findings are remarkable since we did find syntactic

mimicry by the participants themselves, this leads us to suggest that perhaps syntactic

mimicry is a more subtle phenomenon than lexical mimicry and can therefore be

elicited in individuals’ speech but is too weak to elicit any prosocial effects.

An important point of critique that could be raised is that Experiment 2’s control

condition might not have been completely neutral. That is, whereas in the mimicry

condition participants were mimicked on all target trials, in the no mimicry condition

participants were actually anti imitated on all target trials. One might argue that this is

not a truly neutral situation and that this might therefore distort our view on individuals’

baseline condition of prosocial behavior, what we actually intended to measure in the

control condition. However, although one study found negative effects of behavioral

anti mimicry on prosocial behavior (as compared to a neutral control condition in which

the conversation partner restrained from any behaviors, for more information on this

study see Kulesza, Szypowska, Jarman, & Dolinski, 2014), another study found that

such effects can not be generalized to verbal (syntactic) mimicry (Abrahams, 2016,

Experiment 3). In the latter study no negative effects of syntactic anti imitation in

Spanish were observed: participants in a truly neutral control condition tended to spend

a similar amount of time on an extra task as anti imitated participants did. Although

these findings strengthen our choice of control condition, especially since we were not

eager to include a neutral control condition since this shift in stimuli compared to those

used in Experiment 1 might raise suspicion among participants, the current findings do

contrast Abrahams’ (2016, Experiment 2 and Experiment 3) study in which positive

effects of syntactic mimicry (as compared to syntactic anti mimicry) were found. As

mentioned previously, however, this discrepancy might be due to the fact that the


current study aimed to investigate prosocial behavior towards third parties whereas

Abrahams’ research focused on prosocial behavior towards the interlocutor. Further

research should be conducted to shed more light on these possible explanations.

Another cause for the discrepancy between our current findings in Experiment 2

and Abrahams’ previous findings (2016) might be the exact implementation of the extra

task. Whereas we administered the extra task in the presence of the experimenter,

Abrahams asked participants to carry out the extra task in an adjacent room at their own

pace. Although in both studies the decline rate was very low (in the present study none

of the participants declined to help with the extra task, and in Abrahams’ study one

participant in Experiment 2 declined and two participants in Experiment 3 declined), we

suggest that the actual presence or absence of the experimenter during the task might

have played a vital role regarding the time participants were willing to spend on the

task. If the experimenter would not have been present, participants might have felt less

rushed for example, or it would have been easier for them to quit with the task when

they wished to. If the presence of the experimenter then had a larger impact on

participants in one of both conditions, this might have created a crucial bias in our

results. Additionally, as discussed previously, ceiling effects might have been present in

the current study since 18 out of 39 participants spent the maximum time on the task.

Although we did explore whether different results would be obtained when we only

analyzed the data of participants who did not spend the maximum time on the task, no

conclusive statements can be drawn from this (due to the small number of participants

after exclusion of these 18 participants). If participants would have carried out the extra

task in a separate room, as was done in the study by Abrahams (2016), both compliance

effects and ceiling effects could have been avoided or reduced.

A first direction for future research might be to further test Kulesza et al.’s claim

(2013) that syntactic mimicry would not be sufficiently strong to induce prosocial

behavior by assessing whether there is a difference between syntactic mimicry and other

levels of alignment regarding prosocial inclinations. Such studies could provide

valuable information regarding the specific role of the type of alignment in verbal

mimicry. It might be useful to replicate the current study with several minor adaptations.


As set out before, we argue that the request to fill out an extra questionnaire is a credible

and useful measure of prosocial behavior, provided that it would be administered as in

Abrahams’ study (2016; i.e. in a separate room without time restrictions). When carried

out as in Abrahams’ previous study it might have several advantages over many other

previously applied measures. Previous (experimental) studies for example often used

dichotomous measures so that prosocial behavior could not be quantified (e.g.

willingness to help out with an extra questionnaire [yes/no] in Ashton-James and her

colleagues’ study, 2007, and the picking up of a pen in Van Baaren, Holland, and their

colleagues’ experiment, 2004). Some other measures consisted of unusual demands for

help, possibly causing the request to give away too much information regarding the

objective of it (e.g. the request to help sharpening pencils after the experiment as

implemented by Whitaker and Bushman, 2012). Other studies applied measures that

were difficult to control, such as the dropping of several pens in Van Baaren, Holland,

and their colleagues’ study (2004). The current measure seems to solve each of these

issues elegantly, and if the task would be carried out as in the previous study by

Abrahams (2016) we argue that this would be a suitable measure of prosocial behavior

in experimental studies. Secondly, future studies might focus on obtaining a more

differentiating view on which aspects of Extraversion might have been responsible for

the contrasting findings of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. If future studies would

include the more extensive NEO-PI-R instead of the brief NEO-FFI in their research

design they might be able to investigate which specific subfacets of NEO-PI-R’s scale

of Extraversion (Warmth, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity, Excitement Seeking,

and Positive Emotion; Costa & McCrae, 1992) play a role in these processes. The

diverging findings regarding the effects of levels of Extraversion on verbal mimicry up

to date (e.g. Gill et al., 2004; Kurzius, 2015; the current study) suggest that more

complex and specific processes underpin these findings and that they might not be

captured adequately by a brief questionnaire as the NEO-FFI. Similarly, the NEO-PI-R

could possibly also shed more light on which subaspects of Neuroticism might have

been responsible for Experiment 2’s counterintuitive findings of Neuroticism being

positively related to prosocial behavior in an imitation setting.


Although the current thesis replicated previous findings of syntactic mimicry in

dialogue, we did not find increased prosocial behavior after verbal mimicry as previous

studies did. Several intriguing albeit partially counterintuitive effects regarding the role

of personality in these processes were reported. An integrative account on how Big Five

personality factors might affect verbal mimicry has yet to be developed in order to shed

more light on the underlying mechanisms, and to clarify several of the contrasting

findings recently found in research on the effects of personality on mimicry behavior.


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Appendix A

Target and prime items

The items below had to be described by the participant, or the description of the picture

was displayed on the screen and read aloud by the confederate.

Schenken (to give)

Laten zien (to show)


Geven (to give)

Tonen (to show)


Verkopen (to sell)

Overhandigen (to hand)


Appendix B

Filler items

The filler items below had to be described by the participant, or the description of the

picture was displayed on the screen and read aloud by the confederate.

Intransitive items


Transitive items


Appendix C

NEO-FFI Leeftijd:

Kruis aan welke uitspraak je mening het beste weergeeft. Let erop dat je geen regels

overslaat.

HO = helemaal oneens O = oneens N = neutraal E = eens HE = helemaal eens

HO O N E HE

1. Ik ben geen tobber O O O O O

2. Ik houd ervan veel mensen om mee heen te hebben O O O O O

3. Ik hou er niet van mijn tijd te verdoen met dagdromen O O O O O

4. Ik probeer hoffelijk te zijn tegen iedereen die ik ontmoet

O O O O O

5. Ik houd mijn spullen netjes en schoon O O O O O

6. Ik voel me vaak de mindere van anderen O O O O O

7. Ik lach gemakkelijk O O O O O

8. Als ik eenmaal de goede manier om iets te doen gevonden heb, dan blijf ik daarbij

O O O O O

9. Ik verzeil vaak in meningsverschillen met mijn familie en collega’s

O O O O O

10. Ik kan mijzelf vrij goed oppeppen om dingen op tijd af te krijgen

O O O O O

11. Wanneer ik onder grote spanning sta, heb ik soms het gevoel dat ik er onder door ga

O O O O O

12. Ik zie mezelf niet echt als een vrolijk en opgewekt persoon

O O O O O

13. Ik ben geïntrigeerd door de patronen die ik vind in de kunst en de natuur

O O O O O


14. Sommige mensen vinden mij zelfzuchtig en egoïstisch

O O O O O

15. Ik ben niet erg systematisch O O O O O

16. Ik voel me zelden eenzaam of triest O O O O O

17. Ik vind het echt leuk om met mensen te praten O O O O O

18. Ik vind dat leerlingen alleen maar in verwarring worden gebracht door ze te laten luisteren naar sprekers met afwijkende ideeën

O O O O O

19. Ik werk liever met anderen samen dan met ze te wedijveren

O O O O O

20. Ik probeer alle aan mij opgedragen taken gewetensvol uit te voeren

O O O O O

21. Ik voel me vaak gespannen en zenuwachtig O O O O O

22. Ik ben graag daar waar wat te beleven valt O O O O O

23. Poëzie doet mij weinig tot niets O O O O O

24. Ik ben vaak cynisch en sceptisch over de bedoelingen van anderen

O O O O O

25. Ik heb duidelijke doelen voor ogen en werk daar op een systematische manier naar toe

O O O O O

26. Soms voel ik me volkomen waardeloos O O O O O

27. Ik geef er meestal de voorkeur aan om dingen alleen te doen

O O O O O

28. Ik probeer vaak nieuwe en buitenlandse gerechten O O O O O

29. Ik denk dat de meeste mensen je zullen gebruiken als je ze de kans geeft

O O O O O

30. Ik verknoei veel tijd voordat ik echt aan het werk ga O O O O O

31. Ik voel me zelden angstig of zorgelijk O O O O O

32. Ik voel me vaak alsof ik barst van energie O O O O O

33. Ik merk zelden de stemmingen of gevoelens op, die verschillende omgevingen oproepen

O O O O O

34. De meeste mensen die ik ken mogen mij graag O O O O O

35. Ik werk had om mijn doelen te bereiken O O O O O


36. Ik word vaak kwaad om de manier waarop mensen me behandelen

O O O O O

37. Ik ben een vrolijk en levendig iemand O O O O O

38. Ik vind dat we beslissingen in morele zaken van onze religieuze leiders mogen verwachten

O O O O O

39. Sommige mensen vinden mij koel en berekenend O O O O O

40. Al ik iets beloof, kan men er op rekenen dat ik die belofte ook nakom

O O O O O

41. Wanneer dingen mis gaan raak ik maar al te vaak ontmoedigd en heb ik zin om het op te geven

O O O O O

42. Ik ben geen vrolijke optimist O O O O O

43. Wanneer ik een gedicht lees of naar een kunstwerk kijk, voel ik soms een koude rilling of een golf van opwinding

O O O O O

44. Ik ben zakelijk en onsentimenteel in mijn opvattingen

O O O O O

45. Soms ben ik niet zo betrouwbaar als ik zou moeten zijn

O O O O O

46. Ik ben zelden verdrietig of depressief O O O O O

47. Ik heb een jachtig leven O O O O O

48. Ik ben niet erg geïnteresseerd in het speculeren over het wezen van het universum of van de mens

O O O O O

49. Over het algemeen probeer ik attent en zorgzaam te zijn

O O O O O

50. Ik ben een productief mens die een klus altijd voor elkaar krijgt

O O O O O

51. Ik voel me vaak hulpeloos en wil dan graag dat iemand anders mijn problemen oplost

O O O O O

52. Ik ben een heel actief persoon O O O O O

53. Ik heb een breed scala aan intellectuele interesses O O O O O

54. Als ik mensen niet mag, laat ik dat ook merken O O O O O


55. Het lijkt mij maar niet te lukken om de dingen goed op orde te hebben

O O O O O

56. Soms schaam ik me zo dat ik wel door de grond wil zakken

O O O O O

57. Ik ga liever mijn eigen gang dan dat ik leiding geef aan anderen

O O O O O

58. Ik heb vaak plezier in het spelen met theorieën of abstracte ideeën

O O O O O

59. Als het nodig is ben ik bereid om mensen te manipuleren om te krijgen wat ik wil

O O O O O

60. Ik streef er naar uit te blinken in alles wat ik doe O O O O O


Appendix D

Dutch summary

Op basis van eerder onderzoek waarin verbale imitatie en de prosociale consequenties

ervan gemoduleerd bleken te zijn door individuele verschillen, beoogde de huidige

studie twee aspecten van syntactische imitatie te onderzoeken. Enerzijds werd gefocust

op de replicatie en uitbereiding van eerdere bevindingen betreffende de prosociale

gevolgen van verbaal geïmiteerd worden, en werd onderzocht of deze prosociale

gevolgen te generaliseren zijn naar derden. Anderzijds werd beoogd om Big Five

persoonlijkheidsfactoren te linken aan de mate waarin individuen zelf engageren in

verbale imitatie, alsmede aan de prosociale gevolgen van verbale imitatie. Dit werd

onderzocht door middel van het toepassen van een plaatjesbeschrijvingstaak dewelke

participanten uitvoerden samen met een handlanger van de experimentleider. In het

eerste deel van het experiment werd de mate van syntactische imitatie van de

handlanger’s zinstructuren (voorzetseldatief of dubbel object datief) door de

participanten gemeten, dewelke gelinkt werd aan scores op de Big Five vragenlijst

NEO-FFI. In het tweede deel van het experiment lag de nadruk op het relateren van de

scores op deze vragenlijst aan participanten hun prosociaal gedrag ten opzichte van

derden na verbaal geïmiteerd te zijn geweest. Dit werd gekwantificeerd als de tijd die

participanten vrijwillig wilden spenderen aan een vragenlijst waarvan ze werden

gevraagd deze in te vullen voor een andere onderzoeker. Vergelijkbaar met eerdere

onderzoeken werd gevonden dat individuen de datieve structuur die de handlanger

toepaste imiteerden. Ook werd gevonden dat de Big Five factor Extraversie hier een

significante rol in speelde; tegen de verwachtingen in bleek dat participanten met een

hoge score op Extraversie minder verbaal imiteerden dan participanten met een lage

score op Extraversie. In het tweede deel van het onderzoek werd gevonden dat

syntactische imitatie niet leidt tot een verhoging van prosociaal gedrag ten opzichte van

derden, maar wanneer Big Five factoren mee in consideratie werden genomen bleek er

een significante interactie tussen imitatie en Extraversie, en tussen imitatie en

Neuroticisme te zijn betreffende prosociaal gedrag. Na geïmiteerd te zijn geweest

toonden individuen met een hoge score op Extraversie of Neuroticisme meer prosociaal


gedrag dan indivividuen met een lage score op Extraversie of Neuroticisme. In de niet-

imitatie conditie draaide dit effect echter om en toonden participanten met een lage

score op deze factoren meer procosiaal gedrag. Toekomstig onderzoek zou moeten

uitwijzen of vergelijkbare resultaten gevonden zouden worden wanneer prosociaal

gedrag ten opzichte van de gesprekspartner de beoogde afhankelijke variabele zou zijn,

of wanneer lexicale imitatie in plaats van syntactische imitatie zou worden toegepast.