Mirroring is the behavior in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family, often going unnoticed by both parties. The concept often affects other individuals' notions about the individual that is exhibiting mirroring behaviors, which can lead to the individual building rapport with others.
Mirroring is distinct from conscious imitation under the premise that while the latter is a conscious, typically overt effort to copy another person, mirroring is unconsciously done during the act and often goes unnoticed. It has also been described as the chameleon effect.
The display of mirroring often begins as early as infancy, as babies begin to mimic individuals around them and establish connections with particular body movements. The ability to mimic another person's actions allows the infant to establish a sense of empathy and thus begin to understand another person's emotions. The infant continues to establish connections with other individual's emotions and subsequently mirror their movements.
Mirroring can establish rapport with the individual who is being mirrored, as the similarities in nonverbal gestures allow the individual to feel more connected with the person exhibiting the mirrored behavior. As the two individuals in the situation display similar nonverbal gestures, they may believe that they share similar attitudes and ideas as well. Mirror neurons react to and cause these movements, allowing the individuals to feel a greater sense of engagement and belonging within the situation.
Occurrence
Mirroring generally takes place unconsciously as individuals react with the situation. Mirroring is common in conversation, as the listeners will typically smile or frown along with the speaker, as well as imitate body posture or attitude about the topic. Individuals may be more willing to empathize with and accept people whom they believe hold similar interests and beliefs, and thus mirroring the person with whom one is speaking may establish connections between the individuals involved.
Interviews
Additionally, mirroring may play a role in how well an individual fares in a job interview. Within a study conducted by Word, Zanna and Cooper, interviewers were instructed to follow specific types of body language in different experimental conditions. In one condition, interviewers were instructed to demonstrate distant and uninterested body language (such as leaning away or avoiding eye contact), and in another condition, they were asked to demonstrate more welcoming body language (such as smiling and making eye contact). As a result, the individuals being interviewed began to mirror the actions of the interviewer, and thus the individuals in the condition with less friendly body language fared worse within the interview than did individuals in the friendly condition. The study demonstrates that the initial attitudes that an interviewer may have of the individual being interviewed may affect the performance of the interviewee due to mirroring.
Effects of lacking
Individuals with autism or other social difficulties may be less likely to exhibit mirroring, as they may be less unconsciously and consciously aware of the actions of others. This factor may cause additional difficulties for the individuals, as without mirroring, establishing connections with other people may be more difficult. Additionally, other individuals may be less likely to build rapport with the person, as without mirroring the person may seem more dissimilar and less friendly. Individuals who are not unconsciously aware of the gesture may have difficulties in social situations, as they may be less able to understand another person's perspective without it being explicitly stated, and thus may not understand covert cues that are often used in the social world. It is possible for autistic individuals to deliberately learn and become aware of these cues.
Examinations in humans
The use of noninvasive fMRI studies have shown that there is evidence of mirroring in humans similar to that found in monkeys in the inferior parietal lobe and part of the inferior frontal gyrus. Humans show additional signs of mirroring in parts of the brain not observed to show mirroring properties in primates, such as the cerebellum. Mirroring has also been shown to allow non-autistic children to understand what the intentions of an action are before seeing the entire sequence. Because of this, a child can see someone pick up food with the intention to eat and fire all necessary motor chains needed for them to pick up their own food and go through the motions of eating it as well. It has been shown that children with autism lack this motor chain reaction and are thought to use other senses, such as visual or somatosensory, to accomplish similar tasks.
Development
In infant-parent interactions, mirroring consists of the parent imitating the infant's expressions while vocalizing the emotion implied by the expression. This imitation helps the infant to associate the emotion with their expression, as well as feel validated in their own emotions as the parent shows approval through imitation. Studies have demonstrated that mirroring is an important part of child and infant development. According to Kohut's theories of self-psychology, individuals need a sense of validation and belonging in order to establish their concepts of self. When parents mirror their infants, the action may help the child develop a greater sense of self-awareness and self-control, as they can see their emotions within their parent's faces. Additionally, infants may learn and experience new emotions, facial expressions, and gestures by mirroring expressions that their parents utilize. The process of mirroring may help infants establish connections of expressions to emotions and thus promote social communication later in life. Infants also learn to feel secure and valid in their own emotions through mirroring, as the parent's imitation of their emotions may help the child recognize their own thoughts and feelings more readily.
Self-concept
Mirroring has been shown to play a critical role in the development of an infant's notion of self. The importance of mirroring suggests that infants primarily gather their social skills from their parents, and thus a household that lacks mirroring may inhibit the child's social development. Without mirroring, it may be difficult for the child to relate their emotions to socially learned expressions and thus have a difficult experience in expressing their own emotions.
Empathy
The inability to properly mirror other individuals may strain the child's social relationships later in life. This strain may exist because others may feel more distant from the child due to a lack of rapport, or because the child may have a difficult time feeling empathy for others without mirroring. Mirroring helps to facilitate empathy, as individuals more readily experience other people's emotions through mimicking posture and gestures. Mirroring also allows individuals to subjectively feel the pain of others when viewing injuries. This empathy may help individuals create lasting relationships and thus excel in social situations. The action of mirroring allows individuals to believe they are more similar to another person, and perceived similarity can be the basis for creating a relationship.
Rapport
Rapport may be an important part of social life, as establishing rapport with an individual is generally the initial route to becoming friends or acquaintances with another person. Mirroring can help establish rapport, as exhibiting similar actions, attitudes, and speech patterns as another person may lead them to believe that one is more similar to them and thus more likely to be a friend. Individuals may believe that because one replicates the individual's gestures, that one may hold similar beliefs and attitudes as the individual. Mirroring may be more pervasive in close friendships or romantic relationships, as the individuals regard each other highly and thus wish to emulate or appease them. Additionally, individuals who are friends may have more similarities than two strangers, and thus may be more likely to exhibit similar body language regardless of mirroring.
The activation of mirror neurons takes place within the individual who begins to mirror another's movements and allows them a greater connection and understanding with the individual who they are mirroring, as well as allowing the individual who is being mirrored to feel a stronger connection with the other individual.
Power dynamics
Additionally, individuals are likely to mirror the person of higher status or power within the situation or when they feel physical attraction to the other person. Mirroring individuals of higher power may create an illusion of higher status, or create rapport with the individual in power, thus allowing the person to gain favor with the individual in power. This mechanism may be helpful for individuals in situations where they are in a position of bargaining with an individual who possesses more power, as the rapport that mirroring creates may help to persuade the higher status individual to help the person of lower status. These situations include job interviews, other work situations such as requesting promotions, parent-child interactions and asking professors for favors. Each of these situations involves one party who is in a less powerful position for bargaining and another party who has the ability to fulfill the person of lower status's needs but may not necessarily wish to. Thus, mirroring can be a useful tool for individuals of lower status in order to persuade the other party to provide goods or privileges for the lower status party.
See also
- Amygdala hijack
- Kinesthetic learning
- Nonverbal communication
References
- Chartrand, T. L.; Bargh, J. A. (1999). "The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction" (PDF). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 76 (6): 893–910. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893. PMID 10402679. S2CID 11818459. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-09.
- Vartanov, A. V.; Izbasarova, S. A.; Neroznikova, Y. M.; Artamonov, I. M.; Artamonova, Y. N.; Vartanova, I. I. (2023). "The effect of psychological mirroring in telecommunicative dialogue". Cognitive Systems Research. 80: 110–117. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2023.02.008.
- Rochat, Philippe; Passos-Ferreira, Claudia (2008). "From Imitation to Reciprocation and Mutual Recognition" (PDF). In Pineda, J. (ed.). Mirror Neuron Systems. Springer. pp. 191–212. doi:10.1007/978-1-59745-479-7_9. ISBN 978-1-934115-34-3.
- Iacoboni, M. (2008). Mirroring people: The new science of how we connect with others. New York, NY: Picador.
- Word, C. O.; Zanna, M. P.; Cooper, J. (1974). "The nonverbal mediation of self-fulfilling prophecies in interracial interaction". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 10 (2): 109–120. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(74)90059-6.
- Meltzoff, A. (1990). Foundations for developing a concept of self: The role of imitation in relating self to other and the value of social mirroring, social modeling, and self-practice in infancy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. 139–164. APA 1991-97339-006.
- Sedgewick, Felicity (2022). Autism and masking : how and why people do It, and the impact it can have. London. ISBN 9781787755802.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Fox, Nathan A.; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J.; Yoo, Kathryn H.; Bowman, Lindsay C.; Cannon, Erin N.; Vanderwert, Ross E.; Ferrari, Pier F.; van IJzendoorn, Marinus H. (2016). "Assessing human mirror activity with EEG mu rhythm: A meta-analysis". Psychological Bulletin. 142 (3): 291–313. doi:10.1037/bul0000031. PMC 5110123. PMID 26689088.
- Molenberghs, P.; Cunnington, R.; Mattingley, J. B. (2012). "Brain regions with mirror properties: A meta-analysis of 125 human fMRI studies" (PDF). Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 36 (1): 341–9. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.07.004. PMID 21782846. S2CID 37871374.
- Rizzolatti, G.; Fabbri-Destro, M. (2008). "The mirror system and its role in social cognition". Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 18 (2): 179–84. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2008.08.001. PMID 18706501. S2CID 206950104.
- Cattaneo, Luigi; Fabbri-Destro, Maddalena; Boria, Sonia; Pieraccini, Cinzia; Monti, Annalisa; Cossu, Giuseppe; Rizzolatti, Giacomo (26 October 2007). "Impairment of actions chains in autism and its possible role in intention understanding". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (45): 17825–17830. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10417825C. doi:10.1073/pnas.0706273104. PMC 2077067. PMID 17965234.
- Gergely, G.; Watson, J. S. (1996). "The social biofeedback theory of parental affect-mirroring: The development of emotional self-awareness and self-control in infancy". The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 77 (6): 1181–212. PMID 9119582.
- Kohut, H. (1985). Self Psychology and the Humanities. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 9780393700008.
- Jermann, P.; Soller, A.; Muehlenbrock, M. (2001). From mirroring to guiding: A review of the state of art technology for supporting collaborative learning (PDF). Maastricht, Netherlands: European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. pp. 324–331.
- Kupfer, Tom R. (October 2018). "Why are injuries disgusting? Comparing pathogen avoidance and empathy accounts". Emotion. 18 (7): 959–970. doi:10.1037/emo0000395. PMID 29389204. S2CID 24843568.
- Endedijk, H.M.; Meyer, M.; Bekkering, H.; Cillessen, A.H.N.; Hunnius, S. (1 January 2017). "Neural mirroring and social interaction: Motor system involvement during action observation relates to early peer cooperation". Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. 24: 33–41. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2017.01.001. ISSN 1878-9293. PMC 6987761. PMID 28119184.
- Mintz, S. (1985). Sweetness and Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
- Talley, L.; Temple, S. (2015). "How Leaders Influence Followers Through the Use of Nonverbal Communication". Leadership & Organization Development Journal. 36 (1): 69–80. doi:10.1108/lodj-07-2013-0107. Archived from the original on 2015-02-25.
Mirroring is the behavior in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture speech pattern or attitude of another Mirroring often occurs in social situations particularly in the company of close friends or family often going unnoticed by both parties The concept often affects other individuals notions about the individual that is exhibiting mirroring behaviors which can lead to the individual building rapport with others A young boy mirrors the gesture of his grandmother Mirroring is distinct from conscious imitation under the premise that while the latter is a conscious typically overt effort to copy another person mirroring is unconsciously done during the act and often goes unnoticed It has also been described as the chameleon effect The display of mirroring often begins as early as infancy as babies begin to mimic individuals around them and establish connections with particular body movements The ability to mimic another person s actions allows the infant to establish a sense of empathy and thus begin to understand another person s emotions The infant continues to establish connections with other individual s emotions and subsequently mirror their movements Mirroring can establish rapport with the individual who is being mirrored as the similarities in nonverbal gestures allow the individual to feel more connected with the person exhibiting the mirrored behavior As the two individuals in the situation display similar nonverbal gestures they may believe that they share similar attitudes and ideas as well Mirror neurons react to and cause these movements allowing the individuals to feel a greater sense of engagement and belonging within the situation OccurrenceMirroring generally takes place unconsciously as individuals react with the situation Mirroring is common in conversation as the listeners will typically smile or frown along with the speaker as well as imitate body posture or attitude about the topic Individuals may be more willing to empathize with and accept people whom they believe hold similar interests and beliefs and thus mirroring the person with whom one is speaking may establish connections between the individuals involved Interviews Additionally mirroring may play a role in how well an individual fares in a job interview Within a study conducted by Word Zanna and Cooper interviewers were instructed to follow specific types of body language in different experimental conditions In one condition interviewers were instructed to demonstrate distant and uninterested body language such as leaning away or avoiding eye contact and in another condition they were asked to demonstrate more welcoming body language such as smiling and making eye contact As a result the individuals being interviewed began to mirror the actions of the interviewer and thus the individuals in the condition with less friendly body language fared worse within the interview than did individuals in the friendly condition The study demonstrates that the initial attitudes that an interviewer may have of the individual being interviewed may affect the performance of the interviewee due to mirroring Effects of lacking Individuals with autism or other social difficulties may be less likely to exhibit mirroring as they may be less unconsciously and consciously aware of the actions of others This factor may cause additional difficulties for the individuals as without mirroring establishing connections with other people may be more difficult Additionally other individuals may be less likely to build rapport with the person as without mirroring the person may seem more dissimilar and less friendly Individuals who are not unconsciously aware of the gesture may have difficulties in social situations as they may be less able to understand another person s perspective without it being explicitly stated and thus may not understand covert cues that are often used in the social world It is possible for autistic individuals to deliberately learn and become aware of these cues Examinations in humans The use of noninvasive fMRI studies have shown that there is evidence of mirroring in humans similar to that found in monkeys in the inferior parietal lobe and part of the inferior frontal gyrus Humans show additional signs of mirroring in parts of the brain not observed to show mirroring properties in primates such as the cerebellum Mirroring has also been shown to allow non autistic children to understand what the intentions of an action are before seeing the entire sequence Because of this a child can see someone pick up food with the intention to eat and fire all necessary motor chains needed for them to pick up their own food and go through the motions of eating it as well It has been shown that children with autism lack this motor chain reaction and are thought to use other senses such as visual or somatosensory to accomplish similar tasks DevelopmentIn infant parent interactions mirroring consists of the parent imitating the infant s expressions while vocalizing the emotion implied by the expression This imitation helps the infant to associate the emotion with their expression as well as feel validated in their own emotions as the parent shows approval through imitation Studies have demonstrated that mirroring is an important part of child and infant development According to Kohut s theories of self psychology individuals need a sense of validation and belonging in order to establish their concepts of self When parents mirror their infants the action may help the child develop a greater sense of self awareness and self control as they can see their emotions within their parent s faces Additionally infants may learn and experience new emotions facial expressions and gestures by mirroring expressions that their parents utilize The process of mirroring may help infants establish connections of expressions to emotions and thus promote social communication later in life Infants also learn to feel secure and valid in their own emotions through mirroring as the parent s imitation of their emotions may help the child recognize their own thoughts and feelings more readily Self concept Mirroring has been shown to play a critical role in the development of an infant s notion of self The importance of mirroring suggests that infants primarily gather their social skills from their parents and thus a household that lacks mirroring may inhibit the child s social development Without mirroring it may be difficult for the child to relate their emotions to socially learned expressions and thus have a difficult experience in expressing their own emotions Empathy The inability to properly mirror other individuals may strain the child s social relationships later in life This strain may exist because others may feel more distant from the child due to a lack of rapport or because the child may have a difficult time feeling empathy for others without mirroring Mirroring helps to facilitate empathy as individuals more readily experience other people s emotions through mimicking posture and gestures Mirroring also allows individuals to subjectively feel the pain of others when viewing injuries This empathy may help individuals create lasting relationships and thus excel in social situations The action of mirroring allows individuals to believe they are more similar to another person and perceived similarity can be the basis for creating a relationship RapportRapport may be an important part of social life as establishing rapport with an individual is generally the initial route to becoming friends or acquaintances with another person Mirroring can help establish rapport as exhibiting similar actions attitudes and speech patterns as another person may lead them to believe that one is more similar to them and thus more likely to be a friend Individuals may believe that because one replicates the individual s gestures that one may hold similar beliefs and attitudes as the individual Mirroring may be more pervasive in close friendships or romantic relationships as the individuals regard each other highly and thus wish to emulate or appease them Additionally individuals who are friends may have more similarities than two strangers and thus may be more likely to exhibit similar body language regardless of mirroring The activation of mirror neurons takes place within the individual who begins to mirror another s movements and allows them a greater connection and understanding with the individual who they are mirroring as well as allowing the individual who is being mirrored to feel a stronger connection with the other individual Power dynamics Additionally individuals are likely to mirror the person of higher status or power within the situation or when they feel physical attraction to the other person Mirroring individuals of higher power may create an illusion of higher status or create rapport with the individual in power thus allowing the person to gain favor with the individual in power This mechanism may be helpful for individuals in situations where they are in a position of bargaining with an individual who possesses more power as the rapport that mirroring creates may help to persuade the higher status individual to help the person of lower status These situations include job interviews other work situations such as requesting promotions parent child interactions and asking professors for favors Each of these situations involves one party who is in a less powerful position for bargaining and another party who has the ability to fulfill the person of lower status s needs but may not necessarily wish to Thus mirroring can be a useful tool for individuals of lower status in order to persuade the other party to provide goods or privileges for the lower status party See alsoAmygdala hijack Kinesthetic learning Nonverbal communicationReferencesChartrand T L Bargh J A 1999 The chameleon effect The perception behavior link and social interaction PDF Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76 6 893 910 doi 10 1037 0022 3514 76 6 893 PMID 10402679 S2CID 11818459 Archived from the original PDF on 2011 07 09 Vartanov A V Izbasarova S A Neroznikova Y M Artamonov I M Artamonova Y N Vartanova I I 2023 The effect of psychological mirroring in telecommunicative dialogue Cognitive Systems Research 80 110 117 doi 10 1016 j cogsys 2023 02 008 Rochat Philippe Passos Ferreira Claudia 2008 From Imitation to Reciprocation and Mutual Recognition PDF In Pineda J ed Mirror Neuron Systems Springer pp 191 212 doi 10 1007 978 1 59745 479 7 9 ISBN 978 1 934115 34 3 Iacoboni M 2008 Mirroring people The new science of how we connect with others New York NY Picador Word C O Zanna M P Cooper J 1974 The nonverbal mediation of self fulfilling prophecies in interracial interaction Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 10 2 109 120 doi 10 1016 0022 1031 74 90059 6 Meltzoff A 1990 Foundations for developing a concept of self The role of imitation in relating self to other and the value of social mirroring social modeling and self practice in infancy Chicago IL University of Chicago Press pp 139 164 APA 1991 97339 006 Sedgewick Felicity 2022 Autism and masking how and why people do It and the impact it can have London ISBN 9781787755802 a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Fox Nathan A Bakermans Kranenburg Marian J Yoo Kathryn H Bowman Lindsay C Cannon Erin N Vanderwert Ross E Ferrari Pier F van IJzendoorn Marinus H 2016 Assessing human mirror activity with EEG mu rhythm A meta analysis Psychological Bulletin 142 3 291 313 doi 10 1037 bul0000031 PMC 5110123 PMID 26689088 Molenberghs P Cunnington R Mattingley J B 2012 Brain regions with mirror properties A meta analysis of 125 human fMRI studies PDF Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 1 341 9 doi 10 1016 j neubiorev 2011 07 004 PMID 21782846 S2CID 37871374 Rizzolatti G Fabbri Destro M 2008 The mirror system and its role in social cognition Current Opinion in Neurobiology 18 2 179 84 doi 10 1016 j conb 2008 08 001 PMID 18706501 S2CID 206950104 Cattaneo Luigi Fabbri Destro Maddalena Boria Sonia Pieraccini Cinzia Monti Annalisa Cossu Giuseppe Rizzolatti Giacomo 26 October 2007 Impairment of actions chains in autism and its possible role in intention understanding Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 45 17825 17830 Bibcode 2007PNAS 10417825C doi 10 1073 pnas 0706273104 PMC 2077067 PMID 17965234 Gergely G Watson J S 1996 The social biofeedback theory of parental affect mirroring The development of emotional self awareness and self control in infancy The International Journal of Psycho Analysis 77 6 1181 212 PMID 9119582 Kohut H 1985 Self Psychology and the Humanities New York amp London W W Norton amp Co ISBN 9780393700008 Jermann P Soller A Muehlenbrock M 2001 From mirroring to guiding A review of the state of art technology for supporting collaborative learning PDF Maastricht Netherlands European Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning pp 324 331 Kupfer Tom R October 2018 Why are injuries disgusting Comparing pathogen avoidance and empathy accounts Emotion 18 7 959 970 doi 10 1037 emo0000395 PMID 29389204 S2CID 24843568 Endedijk H M Meyer M Bekkering H Cillessen A H N Hunnius S 1 January 2017 Neural mirroring and social interaction Motor system involvement during action observation relates to early peer cooperation Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 24 33 41 doi 10 1016 j dcn 2017 01 001 ISSN 1878 9293 PMC 6987761 PMID 28119184 Mintz S 1985 Sweetness and Power Harmondsworth Penguin Talley L Temple S 2015 How Leaders Influence Followers Through the Use of Nonverbal Communication Leadership amp Organization Development Journal 36 1 69 80 doi 10 1108 lodj 07 2013 0107 Archived from the original on 2015 02 25
