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Cognitive and Emotional Determinants of the Occurrence of Imitative Behaviour *
Author(s) -
WALTERS RICHARD H.,
AMOROSO DONALD M.
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1967.tb00518.x
Subject(s) - psychology , arousal , cognition , developmental psychology , stimulus (psychology) , generalization , perception , audiology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , medicine , mathematical analysis , mathematics , neuroscience
Eighty subjects participated in an investigation of cognitive and emotional determinants of imitative behaviour. Subjects' eye movements were recorded as they looked at a series of slides that included sexually significant stimuli both before and after witnessing the eye movements of a model as he looked at a similar series of slides. A 2 times 2 × 2 factorial design was employed with half the subjects being exposed to a model who avoided sexually significant stimuli and the remainder being exposed to a model who looked at these stimuli. Before exposure to the model half the subjects under each type‐of‐model condition were given the impression that their previous behaviour had been nonconforming; the rest of the subjects were given the impression that their behaviour had been conforming. The third independent variable was the level of a physical stimulus (white noise) capable of producing physiological arousal. Subjects' heart records were recorded throughout the experimental session. The results indicate that the nonconformity‐conformity manipulation was an important determinant of the occurrence of imitative behaviour but that physiological arousal per se was relatively unimportant. A generalization test showed that the influence of the type of model persisted in a new situation, but that other manipulations had no generalization effects. It is suggested that the importance of perceptual‐cognitive factors has not been sufficiently emphasized in most previous discussions of determinants of imitative behaviour.