"Behavioural imitation - automatically copying the actions of others - is thought to be adaptive because it signals social interest, increases interpersonal liking, and facilitates smooth social interactions," said researcher Professor Christy Ball, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo.

New social interactions

"Because shy individuals tend to feel irritable during new social interactions, the team of researchers wanted to examine whether shy people are less susceptible to this adaptive social behavior, as well as the mechanisms that might explain this relationship," Professor Ball added.

150 undergraduate students participated in a recorded Zoom session with a researcher, who asked a series of five standardized questions and performed a pre-planned behavior while each question was asked. To disguise the true purpose of the study, participants were told that it aimed to investigate how personality traits relate to perceptions of online platforms.

Higher self focus

Participants then completed a self-focused attention assessment, reporting their agreement or disagreement with statements such as “I was focusing on my own internal reactions” and “I was focusing on the impression I was making on the other person.”

After systematically encoding Zoom sessions, the researchers discovered that 42% of the participants imitated the researcher at least once. Participants with a higher level of shyness also tended to report a higher level of self-focus during the session, as well as being less likely to exhibit behavioral imitation.

Rapid heartbeat

"The study found that college students with higher levels of shyness were less likely to imitate the experimenter's behaviors during online social interaction, which was explained by higher levels of self-focus during the interaction," Professor Ball told psyspot.

Prof. Ball explained that interpreting this result “as indicating that shy individuals may focus their attention inward during new social interactions (for example, focusing on their rapid heartbeat), which can hinder the attention that should be paid to the social partner, and plays in the Ultimately a role in reducing the likelihood that they will engage in behavioral simulation.”

Unfamiliar interactions

"The study examined the relationships between shyness, self-attention and behavioral imitation during unfamiliar social interaction," said Professor Ball. An interesting future direction is to examine whether a similar pattern of outcomes unfolds in the course of interactions with familiar others such as friends or family. Since shy individuals tend to feel irritable, particularly during new social interactions, it is likely that self-focused attention is not increased during familiar interactions, which means that behavioral imitation may not be affected in this context.”

"Chameleon Effect"

Professor Ball added that “behavioral imitation was measured during an active social context, given that the participant was expected and asked to respond to the researcher’s questions,” explaining that the team of researchers hypothesized “that in more passive social contexts where the individual can play an observing role, it may be Shyness is associated with more behavioral mimicry as a way to integrate with the social environment and stay out of the spotlight, with some previous researchers referring to the blending function to mimic behavior as the "chameleon effect".