People often copy small actions of the people they are watching without meaning to. Psychologists call it automatic imitation: the quick, unplanned tendency to mirror another person's actions. Researchers say it helps people connect. In the words of Oliver Genschow, first author of a new study on the reflex, "this can help facilitate social interaction and foster social bonds."

Pedestrians crossing the Shibuya Scramble Crossing in Tokyo at dusk, long exposure, blurred streams of people moving in different directions.
Pedestrians cross the Shibuya Scramble Crossing in Tokyo. Illustration only; the people shown did not take part in the study. Photo: Benh Lieu Song, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

A test built around that question

For decades the reflex has been described as universal. But most of the research behind that claim came from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic samples, which leaves a fair question open: does everyone mirror each other to the same degree, or does the way a society is organized turn the dial up or down?

Researchers at Leuphana University Lüneburg, the University of Cologne, FernUniversität in Hagen and other institutions, published its answer in Communications Psychology this month. Their reasoning went like this. Theory suggests that people in collectivist cultures, which stress group ties and shared goals, focus more on others than on themselves. So they might mirror more. Cultures that lean individualist, which stress independence, might mirror less.

To test it, they used a standard lab task. Participants saw a hand on screen lift either its index finger or its middle finger. At the same moment, a number told them which of their own fingers to lift. Sometimes the two matched. Sometimes they conflicted. People are reliably slower when what they see conflicts with what they have to do, and the size of that delay is an indirect measure of how strongly they imitate.

What they found, and what they did not

The first experiment compared the United States and Vietnam, chosen because they sit far apart on the individualism and collectivism scale. It included 408 people, with samples matched to each country's age and gender mix, and it found no difference between the two.

The second was much larger. After exclusions, 4,447 participants across 22 countries took part, and the team adjusted the design so that the physical layout of the hands could not stand in for imitation itself. The mirroring effect appeared in every one of the 22 countries.

The central result is plain. The mirroring effect showed up in every nation studied, and the researchers found no compelling evidence that a country's place on the individualism and collectivism scale changed how strongly it showed up. Their statistical analysis found strong support for the shared effect and no compelling case for a culture effect.

There was one wrinkle, and the authors flag it as preliminary. When the hands on screen lined up in space with the participant's own hands, the imitation effect got a boost in highly individualist countries but not in highly collectivist ones. That may hint that the machinery behind the reflex works a little differently from place to place, even if the overall strength does not. It is a lead for future work, not a conclusion.

Crowd crossing a street in Harajuku, Tokyo, seen directly and reflected many times in the angled mirrors of a building entrance.
Pedestrians and their reflections in the mirrored entrance of Tokyu Plaza Omotesando Harajuku in Tokyo. Illustration only; the people shown did not take part in the study. Photo: Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The limits matter

It is tempting to read this as proof that people everywhere behave alike. The study does not say that, and the size of the effects shows why. In the United States and Vietnam comparison, the delay on conflicting trials was roughly 20 milliseconds. In the larger study, once the layout was controlled, the imitation-specific effect was about 6 milliseconds. These are fractions of a blink, measured in a finger-lifting task on a computer, with participants recruited through an online panel.

That is a long way from asking whether people in different places copy each other's clothes, accents or opinions. The study measured a reflex, not social conformity. It also tested one cultural dimension, individualism versus collectivism, and says nothing about others.

What it does challenge is a neat theory. The idea that cultures focused on the group should mirror more, which the authors say follows from theories about how much attention people pay to themselves versus others, did not hold up in this test.

What comes next

Genschow's team says it wants to know whether people mirror members of their own group more strongly than outsiders, and whether the reflex works the same way when the movement comes from a robot instead of a person. Those questions get closer to everyday life than a finger on a screen does.

For now, the finding is a modest one with a satisfying shape. Researchers went looking for a difference between cultures in one of the most basic social reflexes. Across 22 countries, they mostly found the same small flinch.


October 25, 2026