Mimicry: causes and consequences

• People mimic others’ facial and emotional expressions, behavioral movements, and verbal patterns.
• Many social factors can facilitate or inhibit mimicry.
• Mimicry has important affective, behavioral, and cognitive consequences.
• Deficits in mimicry may underlie some social disorders.

People both mimic and are mimicked in nearly every social interaction, though neither the mimicker nor the mimicked are generally aware of its occurrence. People mimic what they observe in others, including facial expressions, emotions, behavioral movements, and verbal patterns. In the current review we focus on the causes and consequences of mimicry. Specifically, what causes mimicry to occur within a given social interaction and what are the downstream consequences of such mimicry? We position recent developments in the context of prior findings in order to emphasize the current direction of mimicry research. Then we turn to the role of mimicry in social disorders and discuss how mimicry may underlie social deficits in these disorders.