Abstract
High-fidelity copying is critical to the acquisition of culture. However, young children's high-fidelity imitation can result in overimitation, the copying of instrumentally irrelevant actions.We present a series of studies investigating whether adults too overimitate. Experiment 1 found that adults do overimitate, even when evaluation pressures were reduced (Experiment 2) and when participants were faced with a time pressure involving a monetary reward (Experiment 3). Only when participants were presented with a demonstration by someone they believed to be a fellow participant (Experiment 4) did less than half of them overimitate. Thus, overimitation appears to be a robust, adaptive process allowing the acquisition of new information in unfamiliar settings.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 185-195 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Social Psychology |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 05 Nov 2012 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 20 Nov 2012 |
Keywords
- Cultural evolution
- Imitation
- Observational learning
- Overimitation
- Social learning
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Sociology and Political Science
- Psychology(all)