Mimicry is the replication of another person’s behaviour and/or physiological state in short temporal succession of the original behaviour. It can be differentiated into autonomic mimicry and motor...Show moreMimicry is the replication of another person’s behaviour and/or physiological state in short temporal succession of the original behaviour. It can be differentiated into autonomic mimicry and motor mimicry, with the former denoting mimicry of autonomic nervous system activity such as heart rate, with visible behaviours such as blushing or pupil dilation, whereas motor mimicry is any mimicry of motor movements. Together, these two types of autonomic mimicry result in emotional mimicry, also called emotional contagion. The primary aspect of emotional mimicry is reciprocal evaluation, as people with positive affiliation towards each other exhibit it the most. However, socially anxious people have deficiencies in motor mimicry and do not prefer a mimicking partner. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether highly socially anxious people would evaluate virtual characters exhibiting autonomic mimicry less positively than low socially anxious individuals. Within the study, 29 people with different levels of social anxiety were exposed to autonomic mimicry through pupil dilation by three virtual characters telling three different stories, whilst three others told stories without mimicking the participants, but still exhibiting occasional pupil dilation. Comfortability around the characters was measured through the desire for future interaction scale, and liking through an avatar evaluation questionnaire. Two repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) and two mixed ANOVA were conducted and yielded no significant differences in evaluation between the mimicry conditions, nor any significant mediation of these differences by the social anxiety group, suggesting that differences in peoples’ evaluations of mimicry are primarily reserved to motor mimicry.Show less
Mimicry of behavior is a well-known phenomenon, thought to be important for social interaction. Some studies suggest that socially anxious individuals differ from the normal population in their...Show moreMimicry of behavior is a well-known phenomenon, thought to be important for social interaction. Some studies suggest that socially anxious individuals differ from the normal population in their mimicking behavior. This difference might be a sign of a mechanism involved in social anxiety. Previous research suggests a difference between autonomic and motor mimicry. Autonomic mimicry is related to the autonomic nervous system which is largely free of conscious influence, while motor mimicry is related to the motor areas and the mirror neuron system. In this paper the focus therefore lies on autonomic pupil dilation mimicry, ruling out conscious influence on mimicry behavior. This study aims to replicate previous findings that found a difference for socially anxious peoples mimicking behavior. The direction of the difference in mimicking behavior will be addressed in the exploratory part of this study in the case of significant results. Performed was a simple regression analysis between the independent anxiety score variable obtained using the LSAS-SR and the dependent mimicry score. The results were ambiguous to a certain extent. The first analysis, including a wider range of data, was significant. It suggests an influence of social anxiety on pupil dilation mimicry, with a higher anxiety score leading to decrease in mimicry, suggesting a possible mechanism related to mimicry differences in social anxiety. However the effect size was not very high. Subsequent analysis excluding very noisy data and cases with low signal coverage led to insignificant results, suggesting normal perception and response to pupil dilation mimicry for people with social anxiety.Show less
