In unmanipulated face-to-face interactions, instances of direct mimicry are a subset of this broader class of reciprocal social behaviours. Specifically, high levels of mimicry likely signal a form of similarity between interaction partners, which makes it easier to anticipate and access the feelings and future behaviour of an interaction partner (Tamir & Thornton, 2018 Thornton & Tamir, 2019) by allowing one to use their own behavioural style as an archetype. While there are slight variations in these behaviours, all are fast, sometimes millisecond-level, responses within interactions that likely generate perceptions of social fluency by increasing the degree to which a partner’s actions feel predictable (Delaherche et al., 2012 Wheatley et al., 2012). The term mimicry has been used by researchers to describe not only direct imitation, but also a broader class of reciprocal social behaviours that include behaviours that are tightly coupled in time (“social synchrony”) and behaviours that might be complementary rather than exact replicas of another’s behaviour, such as head nodding during an interlocutor’s explanation (“social reciprocity” Hale et al., 2019). In addition, more trust exchanges occur between in-group members than between out-group members, making this manipulation difficult to generalize to the context of real-world trust exchanges. However, one important consideration is that there are often more differences within groups than there are between groups, which may mean that this is not the best manipulation of similarity. Evidence from this work largely shows that people are much more likely to like, cooperate with, and trust in-group, relative to out- group members, partially because they are more similar with respect to the experimental context (Balliet et al., 2014 Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014). Specifically, people who are similar to the self on some experimentally salient dimension (e.g., race, sex, team assignment) are classified as in-group members and those who are dissimilar on that dimension become the out-group (e.g., Appiah et al., 2013). Similarity is often operationalized and manipulated using group membership (e.g., Chen & Kenrick, 2002 Montoya & Pittinsky, 2011 Vang & Fox, 2013). Indeed, recent research has indicated that increased fluency, in the context of name perception, leads to greater trust in economic games (Zürn & Topolinksi, 2017). Thus, the ease or fluency with which people can interpret others’ behaviour may serve as a trustworthiness cue. For example, neuroimaging evidence suggests that people use the self as a reference when inferring others’ states and traits and may attribute their own perceptions of another’s trustworthiness to shared similarity (Jenkins et al., 2008), thereby enhancing perceived trust (Krueger, 1998 Taylor & Brown, 1988). People use their own attitudes and behaviours to interpret those of others (Gordon, 1992), leading to easier recall of similar others’ attitudes and more accurate predictions of future behaviour (Thornton et al., 2019). Specifically, the presence of similarity may make it easier to trust someone because similar attitudes and beliefs are more easily accessible. One possible mechanism underlying the similarity-trust relationship is the notion that interactions with similar others feel more fluent and are easier to process (e.g., Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011 Whittlesea & Leboe, 2000). Likewise, research indicates that people with similar interests are more likely to trust and cooperate with one another in the personal domain (Ziegler & Golbeck, 2007), and in the corporate realm, that corporations with similar business models are less likely to employ coercive negotiation strategies (Lui et al., 2006). Thus, physical or appearance-related similarity may increase trust behaviours (e.g., DeBruine, 2002, 2005). For example, evidence shows that in an economic trust game, people who interact with a person of another race return less money than people who interact with a person of the same race (Glaeser et al., 2000). Findings from this work broadly suggest that as similarity between interaction partners increases, so does liking, cooperation, and trust (Fischer, 2009 Lui et al., 2006), and that high levels of similarity positively influence interpersonal attraction and social perceptions (Bagues & Perez-Villadoniga, 2013 Byrne & Griffitt, 1973 Jamieson et al., 1987 Morry, 2007 Newcomb, 1963). Researchers have examined the effects of similarity across a variety of contexts, such as negotiation outcomes (Wilson et al., 2016) and romantic partner selection (Tidwell et al., 2013).
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