Being mimicked makes you a prosocial voter

Mariëlle Stel*, Fieke Harinck

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)
5 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

People's voting behavior has a great impact on the political road that is taken in our countries. The current research shows that mimicry, the imitation of nonverbal behavior, unconsciously affects our political voting behavior. Earlier research has shown that mimicry enhances prosocial thoughts and behaviors. As prosocial people are expected to be more attracted to left-wing parties, it was predicted that mimicry affects people's voting behavior. As expected, mimickees voted more often for left-wing than for right-wing parties than nonmimickees. This effect was due to a shift in mimickees' view of themselves as being more related to others. Thus, mimicry does more than making people more prosocial, it even affects their political decisions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)79-84
Number of pages6
JournalExperimental psychology
Volume58
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Jan 2011

Keywords

  • Empathy
  • Interconnectedness
  • Mimicry
  • Nonverbal behavior
  • Politics
  • Prosocial
  • Voting

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