title: Being mimicked increases prosocial behavior in 18-month-old infants.
abstract: Most previous research on imitation in infancy has focused on infants' learning of instrumental actions on objects. This study focused instead on the more social side of imitation, testing whether being mimicked increases prosocial behavior in infants, as it does in adults (van Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, & van Knippenberg, 2004). Eighteen-month-old infants (N = 48) were either mimicked or not by an experimenter; then either that experimenter or a different adult needed help. Infants who had previously been mimicked were significantly more likely to help both adults than infants who had not been mimicked. Thus, even in infancy, mimicry has positive social consequences: It promotes a general prosocial orientation toward others.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. carpenter@eva.mpg.de
authors.forename: Malinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carpenter
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Uebel
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male