imitation, in psychology, the reproduction or performance of an act that is stimulated by the perception of a similar act by another animal or person. Essentially, it involves a model to which the attention and response of the imitator are directed.
As a descriptive term, imitation covers a wide range of behaviour. In their native habitats, young mammals can be observed copying the activities of the older members of the species or the play of each other. Among human beings, imitation can include such everyday experiences as yawning when others yawn, a host of unconsciously and passively learned replications of social conduct, and the deliberate adoption of the ideas and habits of others.
Studies of infants show that in the second half of the first year a child will imitate the expressive movements of others—for example, raising of the arms, smiling, and attempts at speech. In the second year the child begins imitating other people’s reactions to objects. As the child grows up, all kinds of models are set before him, most of them determined by his culture. These include physical posture, language, basic skills, prejudices and pleasures, and moral ideals and taboos. How a child copies these is determined chiefly by the social and cultural influences of reward or punishment that direct a child’s development.
Any uniformity or similarity of thoughts and acts among people does not necessarily mean, however, that these are caused by the same or similar psychological motives or mechanisms. Variations in situations, in drives, and in learned ways of adaptation are often too complicated to be categorized as imitation.
Many earlier psychologists took it for granted that imitation was caused by an instinct or at least by an inherited predisposition. Later writers have viewed the mechanisms of imitation as those of social learning. Imitation is central to the social learning approach of Canadian-born American psychologist Albert Bandura. His investigations showed how much human behaviour is learned through imitating another individual who is observed receiving some kind of reward or encouragement for a behaviour. Researchers commonly distinguish between imitation caused by simple conditioned reflex, that caused by common trial-and-error learning, and that involving the higher thought processes.