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Intimate imitation: Automatic motor imitation in romantic relationships
Lara Maister1, Manos Tsakiris1
1Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Cognition
|April 6, 2016
Summary
Romantic partners show greater automatic imitation than platonic friends, indicating a unique bodily self-other overlap in romantic relationships. This imitation is linked to relationship quality and adult attachment styles.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Interpersonal closeness involves cognitive overlap between self and partner.
- Bodily self-other overlap, representing another's embodied experiences as one's own, has been studied but not in romantic partners.
- Automatic imitation serves as a measure of bodily overlap in the motor domain.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate bodily self-other overlap between romantic partners.
- To examine automatic imitation as a case of motor domain bodily overlap in romantic relationships.
- To explore the relationship between imitation, relationship quality, and adult attachment styles.
Main Methods:
- Participants' automatic imitation of romantic partners and platonic close others was measured.
- Automatic imitation was used as an indicator of bodily self-other overlap.
- Adult attachment style was assessed to understand its relation to imitation.
Main Results:
- Participants exhibited significantly more automatic imitation towards romantic partners compared to platonic close others.
- The degree of imitation in romantic relationships correlated with key aspects of relationship quality.
- Adult attachment style was found to be related to the observed imitation patterns.
Conclusions:
- Romantic partners demonstrate a unique form of bodily self-other overlap, evidenced by increased automatic imitation.
- Automatic imitation in romantic relationships is associated with relationship quality and attachment.
- These findings extend the understanding of self-other overlap into the embodied and romantic domains.
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