University of Groningen
Unconscious Bonding Rachl, Judith
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The Hidden Costs of Feeling
Good: Nonverbal Behavioral
Mimicry Fosters Aversion to
Making an Effort
Rachl-Willberger, J., Van Yperen, N. W., & Leander, N. P. (2018). The Hidden Costs of Feeling Good: Nonverbal Behavioral Mimicry Fosters Aversion to Making an Effort. Manuscript in preparation for submission.
We thank Johanna Diedrichs, Eike Eifler, Josefine Geiger, Annika Hoffmann, Alexander Sommerkamp-Homann, Alex Thielen, Lea van Schwartzenberg and Stella Welter for their excellent research assistance.
Abstract
Research suggests that mimicry by an interaction partner can lead to positive affect. Yet, positive affect might have a negative impact on people’s effort and working performance, as these feelings are likely to imply that things are going well or even better than necessary. We argue and demonstrate that such an experience of positivity can have hidden costs for people without being noticed, an issue that has been ignored so far. Across three experiments, our findings indeed suggest that mimicry causes individuals to become less willing to invest cognitive or physical effort on subsequent tasks. Specifically, in Study 1, mimicked people invested less effort when making a decision. In Study 2, third-party observers rated mimicked participants as less competent in performing a maze-solving task. In Study 3, mimicked participants reduced their effort when working in a group compared to working alone. Implications of people’s reduction of effort are discussed in light of coasting and effort.
The Hidden Costs of Feeling Good: Nonverbal Behavioral Mimicry Fosters Aversion to Making an Effort
Over a hundred years ago the French philosopher Guillaume Ferrero identified the principle of least effort, stating that animals, human beings and even machines chose the easiest path to reach a goal (Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006). However, the term “principle of least effort” was introduced by linguist George Kingsley Zipf (Zipf & Behavior, 1950), who theorized that people use abbreviations instead of the “real” word (e.g., math for mathematics). This principle was transferred into other disciplines including psychology suggesting that people prefer less demanding courses of actions (e.g., Solomon, 1948), and it might also include interactions with others. What remains unclear, however, is how and when people engage in reducing their efforts and simply coast along without a cost. Note that this experience is subjective, yet might undermine people’s objective performance behavior. In the present research, we considered that such coasting might often occur in response to implicit social cues from one’s interaction partners. Most social cues seem to communicate on a nonverbal level, as people communicate up to 70% nonverbally (e.g., Reiman, 2007). A well-investigated phenomenon is nonverbal behavioral mimicry – the copying of the postures and mannerisms of people (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).
Mimicry and Its Hidden Costs
Nonverbal behavioral mimicry has been shown to be an affiliation tool, binding and bonding people together (Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). For example, in a study by Chartrand and Bargh (1999) participants were either mimicked or not by a confederate, while engaging in a picture description task (in this task the participant and the confederate describe pictures to each other in turns). Afterwards they indicated how much they liked the confederate and results showed that mimicked participants indicated more liking towards the confederate and that they enjoyed the interaction more. Yet, not only the recipients of the mimicry benefited from such a mimicry interaction, but also the mimickers themselves. Stel, Blascovich, McCall, Mastop, Van Baaren, and Vonk (2010) found in their study that people who engage in mimicry experience more empathy towards and bonding with their interaction partner (even if it is a recorded person). This relationship, however, can also be the other way around, namely that liking leads to more mimicking behavior. For example, in two studies,
McIntosh (2006) found that emotional facial expressions increased with either being manipulated to like the confederate or interacting with a friend compared to a stranger.
Drawing on these findings, Van Baaren, Fockenberg, Holland, Janssen and Van Knippenberg (2006) were interested in whether mimicry also influences one’s emotional state, namely that people in a good mood mimic others more compared to people in a bad mood. In their study, participants either watched a funny or sad video clip as a mood manipulation. They were then told to judge two music clips while they saw the experimenter on the TV-screen who either played with a pen or not. The researcher recorded participants’ pen-playing behaviors and results indicated that participants in a good mood played with their pen more often when seeing the pen-playing experimenter, but not when seeing the non-pen-playing experimenter. However, this pattern was not found in the sad mood condition; participants’ pen-playing behavior was independent of the experimenter’s pen playing behavior. The researchers conclude that participants mimic when they are in a good mood, but not when they are in a sad mood.
Mimicry can also influence one’s cognitive abilities and actual behavior. For example, Dalton, Chartrand, and Finkel (2010) found that a lack of mimicry reduces one’s self-regulatory resources. In their study, participants were either mimicked or not in a short interaction; afterwards they were asked to solve a couple of different self-control tasks (e.g., fine motor skills, consumption of junk food, procrastinating on a math test). They found that the first part of the experiment – either being mimicked or not – influenced people in their self-control, namely that mimicked people ate less junk food, demonstrated better fine motor control, and procrastinated less on a math test compared to participants who were not mimicked. Note that these authors showed in another study that it is not mimicry restoring regulatory resources, but rather the lack of mimicry depleting these resources. It is also important to take into account that a lack of mimicry per se is not decisive. Mimicking behavior depends heavily on the situation, in other words, what is expected in the current situation. For example, being rejected by a female person and, therefore, being rejected by the group “being female” cannot be restored by mimicry of a male person (Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin, 2008). Such expectations are also important in intercultural interactions and interactions between different hierarchical positions (Dalton, Chartrand, &
Finkel, 2010; Cheng & Chartrand, 2003). For example, people in higher positions (unconsciously) expect that they are mimicked, but in turn coworkers do not expect that they are mimicked by their boss (Cheng & Chartrand, 2003).
So far we showed that mimicry tends to have positive affective, cognitive and behavioral effects on people and their environments. In the present research, we argue that such an experience of positivity can have hidden costs for people without being noticed. These negative consequences might not occur on a subjective level, but rather on objective level (e.g., social loafing: putting less force in pulling a rope when in a group compared to alone). For example, Carver (2003) proposes in his theory of coasting that “positive feelings represent a sign that things are going better than necessary” (p. 241) and that due to this experience people reduce their investment of resources.
Mimicry Leads to Positive Affect
Before we discuss in more details how positive affect can reduce an investment of resources, we first would like to discuss the (indirect) empirical evidence for the link between mimicry and positive affect or rather rapport, as rapport is generally regarded as a positive interaction, while Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (1990) describe it as mutual friendliness and caring, in other words, positive affect towards another person. This view is in line with Russell and Carroll’s (1999) definition of affect as a subjective impression of positivity (or negativity) emerging from an experience. In a study, Maurer and Tindall (1983) investigated the relationship between mimicry and rapport while they measured rapport with the empathy scale of the Barrett-Lennard (1962) Relationship Inventory. In other words, they measured rapport by the subjective impression of friendliness and caring towards the other person.
Another set of studies showed that mimicry is used as a tool to affiliate with others. In a study, participants were subliminally primed with affiliation-related words (e.g., affiliate, like, etc.) and afterwards saw a video of a person they meant to interact with later (the person in the video was actually only a recording). Participants who were primed with the affiliation-related words mimicked the person in the video more than participants who were not primed with affiliation-related words (Lakin & Chartrand, 2003). These findings suggest that people use
mimicry as a means to fulfill their affiliation goal and therefore create an affective binding between them and their future interaction partner.
Embodied cognition theory even suggests that mimicry contributes to the recognition of affect. Blairy, Herrera, and Hess (1999) showed in a study that facial expressions of anger, sadness, and disgust are spontaneously mimicked and that people’s mimicking behavior of anger and disgust are accompanied by shared affect. The researchers tested this paradigm by showing 20 different pictures of emotional expressions (five different emotions in four different manifestations) to participants, while they had to judge the emotional expressions of each picture and indicate their well-being. Participants’ well-being scores on irritation/aggressiveness were higher for angry and fearful expressions and repugnance was higher for the expression of disgust. The authors conclude that participants experienced some form of emotional contagion. In other words, participants’ mimicking behaviors led them experience the same affect as their interaction partner.
Although the study by Blairy et al. (1999) showed only emotional contagion for negative expressions, one can still assume that mimicry creates feelings of positive affect. As mentioned before, mimicry is related to and creates rapport, influences people’s perceptions of liking and the affiliation behavior with others. We, therefore, regard mimicry as a means to create positive affect and feelings.
Positive Affect Leads to a Reduction of Effort
Many models of affect exist (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1990; Higgins, 1987; Cloninger, 1988) and they share some common views and ideas. This paper focuses on Carver’s idea of coasting, namely that positive feelings are “... a sign that things are going better than necessary” (Carver, 2003, p. 421). In his view
“positive affects constitute important information for the people who experience them and play an important regulating function in the flow of behavior” (p.241). In other words, the experience of positive affect influences people in their behavior and this influence might not always have a positive outcome. For example, a positive feeling, whether or not evoked by mimicry, may signal that things are going better than necessary (Carver, 2003), which may result in a reduction of effort. Hence, we assume that nonverbal behavioral mimicry can lead to a reduction of resources. However, this reduction of investment might not be observable on a
subjective level, because people feel better when they are mimicked.
Operationalization of Effort
Before we introduce our operationalization of effort, it is important to define the term effort. The Dictionary of Psychology (Reber & Reber, 2001) defines effort as “the required work to perform some action” (p.229). It is also annotated that especially in psychology the required work depends on one’s subjective experience, which can either mean that the task is seen as voluntarily or that a resistance or barrier needs to be overcome. In light of our assumption, this definition implies that if people experience unconsciously that less work is required to perform a task, they may reduce their effort. Interestingly a German dictionary (Häcker & Stapf, 1998) sees effort – in light of attribution theory – as an internal and variable cause; namely that an unconsciously perceived means should be able to influence the variability of effort. In other words, a person who is mimicked will experience that things are going better than necessary and will adjust one’s effort due to unconsciously recognizing that less work is required.
The Present Research
In the present research, we examined three different manifestations of reduced effort, namely that people show reduced effort by taking longer for a decision, independent of the actual outcome of the decision (they did not take more time for making a more effortful decision); that mimicked participants invested less effort to convince third-party observers that they are competent in performing a maze-solving task; and that people reduce their effort when working in a group compared to working alone (social loafing) and that this effect is moderated by mimicry.
In Study 1, we tested whether mimicked people reduce their effort when making a decision, with the idea that decisions are effortful. For example, Janssen, Fennis, Pruyn, and Vohs (2008) propose that lower levels of self-regulatory resources support the use of heuristics, in other words that people fall back on less demanding actions. In their study, they showed that people who experienced a reduction in their self-regulatory resources donated more money to a well-known charity compared to an unknown charity. In other words, these
participants made use of the authority heuristic due to their lower level of self-regulatory resources and, therefore, reduced their effort. We assume that people who feel that things are going better than necessary will also fall back on less demanding actions, in other words, they reduce their effort.
In Study 2, we investigated whether mimicked people reduce their effort in performing a maze-solving task. Effort and performance are closely related to each other. For example, Locke, Shaw, Saari und Latham (1981) suggested that effort can mobilize performance. However, effort and performance can be displayed on an unconscious level (e.g., heart rate) or on a conscious level (e.g., doing mental arithmetic; Kurzban, Duckworth, Kable, & Meyers, 2013). Although task performance per se is conscious – as it needs to be monitored – we suggest that this conscious performance can be influenced on an unconscious level. We base this logic on the idea that “people are persuaded to consciously set a goal to engage in behavior, their conscious will to act starts out unconsciously” (Custers & Aarts, 2010). Task performance can be measured by observations, which is often used in studies with children (e.g., Davidson & Powell, 1986), why we decided on an observational paradigm.
In Study 3, we additionally tested whether mimicry could explain the famous social loafing effect, namely that people reduce their effort when working in a group. Experiments on social loafing have well investigated this phenomenon. For example, in one of the most famous experiment participants were asked to clap their hands and shout out as loudly as they can for a short amount of time. This clapping and shouting was performed alone, in pairs and small groups. The researchers found that people’s individual clapping and shouting behaviors decreased the bigger the group of people was (note that the overall noise increased, but that people’s individual performance decreased; Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). We used this paradigm and adapted it to a crafting task performance (for more details see Study 4).
Study 1
In Study 1, we tested whether participants who are mimicked by an experimenter reduce their effort by taking more time for a decision they have to make. To avoid the interpretation of people taking more time for making a
“better” decision and, therefore, increasing their effort, we also measured the type of decision people made, namely whether they engage in rational or heuristic reasoning when making the decision. We base our logic on the idea that making a decision is effortful and perhaps also depleting (Janssen, Fennis, Pruyn, & Vohs, 2008). We hypothesize that participants who are mimicked will be averse to making decisions and this will be observable in their behavior on a decision making task.
Method
Participants & Design. Forty-two German participants (21 female) took
part in an experiment for partial course credit. Their ages ranged from 18 to 24 years (M = 20.64, SD = 1.14). The experiment used a one-way (mimicry vs. no mimicry) factorial design.
Procedure & Materials. Participants were randomly assigned to either being
mimicked by the experimenter or not while engaging in a simple, structured interview with the experimenter (e.g., “Do you have a pet?”). The mimicry manipulation continued throughout the interview, in which participants’ nonverbal behaviors – their postures and mannerisms – were subtly copied or not (e.g., Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Afterwards, they completed a questionnaire battery including Busenitz and Barney‘s (1997) decision scenarios. In these two scenarios, people are confronted with a decision narrowed down to two options. Each option is connoted with a different reasoning – either a rational or a heuristic reasoning. Participants have to decide which option they would decide on and justify their decisions. Participants’ justifications can then be coded into whether they used heuristic or rational reasoning or even both. Two independent coders rated participants’ decision styles with good inter-rater reliability (α = .86; coding: 1 = heuristic reasoning only, 2 = both reasoning types, 3 = rational reasoning only). In addition to measuring the specific decisions, we also assessed the amount of time it took them to make their decisions – namely, how long it took to decide on an answer. We defined the decision time as the time the decision scenarios remained on-screen before participants provided their answer and clicked to continue to the next questions (measured in milliseconds and converted to minutes). We averaged the decision time of the two scenarios, r(42) = .49, p = .001. Finally, participants indicated their demographics and reported their suspicions about the study via a funnel debriefing (see Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).
Two participants were excluded: one detected mimicry and a disruption occurred in the testing phase of the other one.
Results and Discussion
A one-way ANOVA was performed on the amount of time it took participants to complete the decision tasks. Results indicate a significant main effect of mimicry, F(1, 38) = 4.24, p = .046, ηp2 = .10. Mimicked participants (M = 3.09, SE =
0.21) took longer to complete the decision task than participants who were not mimicked (M = 2.49, SE = 0.21).
To support our assumption that participants delayed the decision because it was simply more difficult for them, not simply to take extra time to make a more analytical decision, we performed a MANOVA on the coded answers. The results indicate no effect of mimicry on decision type, F ( 2, 37) = 1.47, p = .24. Participants who were mimicked did not differ in the type of their decision compared to participants who were not mimicked (Scenario 1: Mmimicked = 2.83, SE = 0.14; Scenario 2: Mmimicked = 2.13, SE = 0.18; Scenario 1: Mnot-mimicked = 2.55, SE = 0.14; Scenario 2: Mnot-mimicked = 1.93, SE = 0.18).
Altogether, results suggest that mimicry by an interaction partner subsequently leads people to take longer to complete a decision task than non-mimicry, irrespective of the type of decision making strategy they engaged in. This provides initial evidence for the idea that mimicry leads people to struggle with tasks requiring effort. However, our measure in this case, although behavioral, was rather indirect and could simply indicate they were making more of an effort – to, say, make a right decision or a decision they can commit to. Studies 2 and 3 will test our basic assumption using different dependent measures.
Study 2
Here we tested whether mimicry reduces effort on task performance. We asked participants to solve a maze after they were either mimicked or not. These mazes were rated on how competent the performance was assessed by third party raters. If mimicry indeed creates an aversion to effort, the performance level of mimicked participants will be lower than of non-mimicked participants.
Method
Participants & Design. Forty-seven participants (39 female) took part in an
experiment for partial course credit. Their ages ranged from 18 to 22 years (M = 18.91, SD = 1.06) and most were of Dutch origin (94%). The experiment used a one-way (mimicry vs. no mimicry) design.
Procedure & Materials. Participants came individually to the lab and
engaged in a picture description task with the experimenter while either being mimicked or not. Participants then completed a questionnaire battery including a pen-and-paper maze. Participants were instructed to complete the maze while not lifting their pen from the paper. Paired coders rated how competent participants completed the maze. The coders rated each maze together in the following way: they sat down together and received one maze at the time (blind to condition). They both indicated – at the same time – on a line from 0 to 100% how competently they perceive the completion of the maze. If they indicated different numbers they discussed their perceptions and came to a conclusion together. We measured the line from 0 [zero] to the indicated point (in mm) and used it as the dependent measure.
Results and Discussion
Three participants were detected as outliers due to cutoff criteria (-.29 <
SDbeta < .29) and removed from the analysis. A one-way (mimicry vs. no mimicry) ANOVA was performed resulting in a marginally significant main effect, F(1, 42) = 3.62, p = .064, ηp2= .08. Participants who have been mimicked were rated as less
competent (M = 61.21, SE = 2.62) than participants who have not been mimicked (M = 68.24, SE = 2.62). Participants who were mimicked were rated less competent in their performance. To verify the results of these studies, we conducted a meta-analysis in the next step.
Meta-Analysis
We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis – as suggested by Goh, Hall and Rosenthal (2016) – over Study 1 and Study 2 to test the main effect of mimicry on our various indicators of effort.1 For the analysis we used the excel
sheet provided by these researchers and entered the required statistics which
are displayed in Table 3. We first calculated Cohen’s d and Pearson correlations for each study. The correlations were Fisher’s z transformed for the analysis. The effect was highly significant, Mr = .26, Z = 2.73, p = .006, two-tailed, such that mimicked people reduce their effort compared to non-mimicked people.
t N r
Study 1 2.06 40 .32
Study 2 -2.10 42 .32
Study I 1.36 51 .19
Study II 0.05 40 .01
Table 3: Relevant parameters for the meta-analysis
Study 3
Taken together, Studies 1 and 2 showed that mimicry seems to reduce one’s effort, which can be observed in people’s performance and behavior. In this final study, we test whether mimicry could help to explain social loafing – the tendency to reduce one’s individual efforts when working as part of a group whose efforts are expected to be combined (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). If mimicry indeed does influence people in their investment of resources, but does not foster laziness in general, one can assume that the social loafing effect should be moderated by mimicry.
Method
Participants & Design. Seventy-five participants (50 female, 20 male, 5
not-reported) took part in an experiment for partial course credit. Their ages ranged from 18 to 25 years (M = 20.31, SD = 1.63) and the majority of participants were of German origin (70%). The experiment used a 2 (alone vs. group) x 2 (mimicry vs. no mimicry) factorial design. The behavioral task was meant to be relatively mindless and simplistic: the creation of paper Christmas stars (to be used as ornaments). We collected as much data as possible during the holiday season (end of November to mid-December).
Procedure & Materials. Participants first watched a video showing them
how to craft a Christmas star with tissue paper – a relatively easy task. We used this ornament-crafting task because it could be presented as simple fun given the holiday season. To add to the cover story, holiday music played quietly in the background. After the instructional video, participants were asked to craft part of the star to make sure they understood the procedure of crafting. During this practice time the experimenter either mimicked the participant’s nonverbal behavior or not. In the “Alone” condition participants were left on his/her own in the room for ten minutes to craft Christmas stars; in the “Group” condition, participants were paired with three confederates acting as other participants to work individually, alongside the participant. Our logic was that a classic social loafing effect would be observed if participants crafted less (i.e., had lower individual output) when working in a group as opposed to alone.
The dependent measure was participants’ individual output. Unbeknownst to participants, their individual performance was measured by the number of stars they crafted over the 10-minute period. Given that each star was comprised of eight individual star points and gluing these star points together (maximum per star is eight times gluing), we surreptitiously recorded the number of star points the participant crafted and the gluing of these points together as our dependent measure (one star point = 1 point; gluing two star points together = 1 point). The total points for one star is 16 points. Depending on how many star points participants crafted and glued together, they received a different amount of points. Finally, participants filled in a computerized questionnaire including their demographics and a funnel debriefing (see Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).
Results
A 2 (mimicry vs. no mimicry) x 2 (alone vs. group) ANOVA was conducted on participants’ individual output (number of points received from their crafting output). Results indicated no main effect of mimicry, F(1, 71) = 0.46, p =.50, but rather a main effect for group, F(1, 71) = 9.89, p =.002, ηp2= .12, and a significant
two-way mimicry X group interaction, F(1,71) = 4.17, p = .045, ηp2 = .06. As illustrated
in Figure 3, participants who were mimicked crafted less when working in a group (M = 7.35, SE = 0.73) compared to working alone (M = 10.94, SE = 0.71, p < .001). However, non-mimicked participants crafted the same amount regardless of
whether they worked alone (M = 10.00, SE = 0.65) or as part of a group (M = 9.24 SE = 0.69, p = .42).
Figure 3: Amount of crated stars in dependence of mimicry and working in a group or alone.
This suggests mimicry increased social loafi ng – that is, mimicry, prior to working in a group, decreased participants’ individual output. However, no-mimicry did not decrease participants’ individual output compared to working alone. Mimicry appeared to moderate the classical social loafi ng effect.
General Discussion
Research on nonverbal behavioral mimicry has shown many positive effects mimicry has for oneself and one’s interaction partner (Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). Many theories of mimicry exist trying to explain the reason why people mimic and yet not one single theory is capable of integrating all the empirical fi ndings (Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009). Some have argued that mimicry is solely a communication tool (e.g., Kraut & Johnston, 1979), yet others showed
that people also mimic when no communication or affiliation goal is present (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Recent theories from neuropsychology suggest that it might be a tool to “access and understand the mind of others” (Iacoboni, 2009; p.654). Therefore, mimicry seems to be a complex construct with a lot of different meanings, functions, and consequences.
Although former research has shown that mimicry has positive effects, our findings suggest that mimicry can have hidden costs. So far other studies only showed the positive sides (e.g. mimicry makes people like their interaction partner more; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) or the negative sides (e.g., being mimicked by a disliked person increases disliking; Stel, Blascovich, McCall, Mastop, Van Baaren, & Vonk, 2010), but did not investigate whether hidden costs on an objective level can occur. Yet, we showed with our studies that hidden costs can occur when being mimicked.
In the present research, we tested the idea that such an experience of positivity can have hidden costs for people without being noticed, a question which has been ignored so far. Specifically, in three studies, we tested whether mimicry reduces one’s investment of cognitive or physical effort on subsequent tasks. In Study 1, we found that people who were mimicked reduced their effort by taking longer for making a decision independent of the outcome of the decision. In Study 2, we found that mimicked people reduced their effort in performing a task competently. Because the samples of our studies are relatively small, we additionally conducted a meta-analysis on Study 1 to Study 2 (Goh, Hall, & Rostenthal, 2016). The outcome supports the idea that mimicry reduces one’s effort and investment of resource, which was found across different methods in terms of measuring people’s effort and performance behavior. In addition, Study 3 revealed that the famous social loafing effect was driven by mimicry, namely that people reduced their effort in a group when mimicked.
Theoretical Implications
Our studies support Carver’s (2003) coasting theory in the way that the influence of positive affect, a typical product of mimicry, influences people’s behaviors and perceptions. To our knowledge, this phenomenon has not been empirically tested so far. Hence, our studies contribute to the extant literature by
showing empirically that “a subjective sense of positivity (and negativity) arising from an experience” (p. 242) leads to a coasting experience. In our studies, such a subjective sense of positivity is caused by mimicry and leads people to reduce their effort in subsequent tasks, namely that they reduce their effort in making a decision, justifying an initial decision as well as performing less competently on a maze task.
We, therefore, assume together with Carver that people shift their “attention and effort to other behavioral domains, where they may be needed more or where unforeseen opportunities have risen” (p.241). This might imply that people shift their unconscious attention to the subjective experience of mimicry. We base this idea on the findings of Chapter 3, who showed that people like to stay in an initial subjective experience. They showed that people who experience mimicry like to stay in this smooth and less demanding experience by behaving in, perceiving and choosing smoothness.
Interestingly, Carver (2003) suggests that the coasting or reduction of effort might cause that the positive feeling will vanish and a fading starts, especially when the person engages in a different activity or other domain of behavior. Especially in light of the findings in Chapter 3 of engaging in more smooth activities after being mimicked, it is unclear what implementations are needed so that such a fading starts.
Another explanation of our findings might be Amir and Ariely‘s (2008) findings. They showed that subgoals can lead to a state of complacency. People who reached their subgoals, “may also shifts motivational focus away from the goal” (p. 1168). In other words, people’s affiliation motivation is fulfilled due to being mimicked and they reduce their performance behaviors in subsequent tasks. Yet, it is questionable whether complacency is equivalent to reducing one’s effort and whether reduced effort is always complacency.
We also shed more light on the famous social loafing effect by showing that mimicry may sometimes moderate this well-established, classic effect. We propose that in all these studies, mimicry might have been the explanatory mechanisms, as the studies were conducted in group settings, in which generally nonverbal behavioral mimicry takes place. For example, in the famous hand clapping and
shouting study, six undergraduates were seated in a lab and asked to make noise by clapping and shouting (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). As mimicry is a tool to affiliate with others (Chartrand & Van Baaren, 2009), it is quite likely that the undergraduates mimicked each other and that this behavior influenced the performance outcome. In our study, those, who were not mimicked, crafted the same amount of stars as people, who were crafting alone. No mimicry seems to signalize that one cannot reduce one’s effort in a group. Traditional explanations of the social loafing effect suggest that people reduce their effort in a group due to perceiving that team members do not work as hard as oneself (Latané, 1981) and that people can hide their effort in the group, in other words that one’s single effort cannot be traced (Davis, 1969). Yet, it might be that mimicry gives the situation a twist, namely that mimicry creates a feeling that one like to stay in it, which can only be reached when working in a group. Perceiving unconsciously that the situation does not facilitate staying in mimicry – rather by working alone or not being brought into the mindset of mimicry – people work up to their standards and do not reduce their effort.
The fact that mimicry seems to have such an important role of leading to a reduction of one’s working effort, researchers and practitioners are able to take action. Mimicry, in general, is a tool everybody uses frequently on a daily basis. As soon as people are together, for example, in open space offices, sport teams, or school classes – mimicry might lead to a reduction of one’s effort. For example, companies and leaders can influence social loafing by making tasks explicit so that people think that their single performance can be traced and mimicry will lose its spell. Future research should test the reduction of effort in field situations so that the fundamental effects are confirmed in real life settings.
Limitations and Future Directions
Our findings show a consistent pattern across four studies and a meta-analysis confirmed the results of Studies 1-2. The experiments used established manipulations of mimicry in combination with a funnel debriefing as well as well established measures of decision making, justifying an initial decision and working in a group. Yet, our results are limited to the small size of participant numbers. However, to minimize the type I error, we run a meta-analysis over Study 1 to 3 to prove our point as suggested by Goh et al. (2016). As this
analysis revealed a highly significant results, we are confident to conclude that mimicked people reduce their effort compared to non-mimicked people. Obviously, we encourage researchers to run studies with higher participant numbers to replicate our findings.
Our set of studies tested effort in the sense of performed action for a required task (Reber & Reber, 2001) and whether people reduce this effort. We explicitly measured effort in four different ways, namely whether people reduce their effort when making a decision, justifying a decision, solving a maze and working in a group. Yet, we certainly measured a small variety of performed effort for a required task and neglected other definitions of effort. For example, we neglected whether people subjectively experienced that their effort was enough. They might regard their effort as suitable for the current situation and might subjectively disagree that their objective performance was below their abilities. We also neglected whether other people’s effort and intention as well as the subjective valence of a certain task can influence whether people reduce their effort. Researchers are encouraged to investigate whether other forms of effort are also reduced when people are being exposed to mimicry.
Another limitation to our findings is our assumption of the mediating role of positive affect. Although we theoretically explained that mimicry is a means to evoke positive affect, we did not test the full model. We did so as the measurement of positive affect might interfere or influence the measurement of our dependent variable. Furthermore, as we propose that mimicry leads to a general positive feeling, it is unclear which measurement would be suitable as a mediator for positive affect. Researchers are encouraged to identify a suitable measurement for positive affect and to test the full model by showing statistically that mimicry leads to more positive affect which in turns causes a reduction of effort.
In conclusion, we found that mimicry can reduce one’s effort and investment of resources. It seems that the unconscious nonverbal cues signalize that people can engage in coasting and that they do not lose anything at least on a subjective level. Yet on an objective level, our results show that people reduce their investment and that they lose part of their performance behavior. Mimicry seems to influence the principle of least effort and it might be that it might explain in part why people prefer less demanding courses of action. This is in line with set
of studies showing that mimicked people feel at ease (Chapter 1). It might be that the feeling of ease is coupled with the preference of less demanding courses of action and that mimicry makes all this possible.
Notes
1 We included two other studies in this meta-analysis, which are not
presented in this chapter, to ensure disclosure of all data sets. These studies were related to how mimicry influences escalation of commitment and conformity, but in Study I, data collection was incomplete and Study II, the results were nonsignificant and uninterpretable.
