Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation?

Abstract

The tendency to involuntarily imitate the actions of others (automatic imitation) can be modulated by social affiliative cues. Here, we explored whether the disruption to our social lives caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may subsequently influence automatic imitation. Three groups were initially presented a sentence comprehension task that featured either neutral (control), safe or unsafe primes to COVID-19 infection. They then completed an automatic imitation task, where a numeric cue was presented alongside apparent motion of an index or middle finger, which was either compatible or incompatible with the required response. Reaction times were longer for the incompatible compared to compatible trials, and thus demonstrated automatic imitation. However, there was no influence of the primes indicating that automatic imitation was unaffected by the risk of COVID-19. The potential theoretical explanations and practical implications of pathogen avoidance and social bonding incentives are discussed with reference to pandemic events.

Fig 1. Outline of the tasks and procedure.

Participants were first assigned one of the prime conditions (control, safe, unsafe) before attempting the stimulus-response task, where the background hand stimuli were either compatible or incompatible with the cued response.

Fig 2. Mean participant compatibility effect (compatible-incompatible difference with positive values being synonymous with automatic imitation) (±SD) as a function of prime group (neutral, safe, unsafe) and reaction time bin (fast, slow).