Leiden University Student Repository

Libermanis, Maksims (2020)

Social distance effect on behavioral mimicry; Possible Links between contagious yawning and empathy.

Bachelor thesis | Psychologie (BSc)

Motor mimicry has been studied since the beginning of the last century, however it remains in need of research and is far from being fully understood. Here, we investigate the effect of gender and social distance (extent of realism during human interaction) on the amount of mimicry. We do so by utilizing repeated measures design, all participants were assigned with an undercover confederate. During each measurement, the confederate has performed one of the following behaviours: yawning, scratching, lip biting or face touching. The conditions were as follows: Pre-recorded (recorded video stimuli), Live Stream (live video stimuli) and Live Interaction (live stimuli). The analysis demonstrated that gender has no significant effect on the prevalence of all mimicry types. Social distance has been noted to have some arguable effects. Hopefully, further research will be able to utilize experience gained during this experiment in both practical and methodological sense, in order to achieve...Show moreMotor mimicry has been studied since the beginning of the last century, however it remains in need of research and is far from being fully understood. Here, we investigate the effect of gender and social distance (extent of realism during human interaction) on the amount of mimicry. We do so by utilizing repeated measures design, all participants were assigned with an undercover confederate. During each measurement, the confederate has performed one of the following behaviours: yawning, scratching, lip biting or face touching. The conditions were as follows: Pre-recorded (recorded video stimuli), Live Stream (live video stimuli) and Live Interaction (live stimuli). The analysis demonstrated that gender has no significant effect on the prevalence of all mimicry types. Social distance has been noted to have some arguable effects. Hopefully, further research will be able to utilize experience gained during this experiment in both practical and methodological sense, in order to achieve better understanding of certain populations and human neurophysiology in general.Show less

mimicry

contagion

yawning

scratching

itching

face

Author

Libermanis, Maksims

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Specialisation

Cognitive Psychology

Supervisors

Diana, F.
Kim, Y.

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en