Imitation in the interest of social influence.

Tested the possibility that imitation may be used as a means of social influence among 40 5th- and 6th-grade boys and girls. One member of each pair served as the model and the other as the S. Ss who were given an induction designed to motivate them to influence the model imitated the model significantly more than Ss who received no induction. Looking and smiling at the model was positively correlated with imitation for the social influence Ss, but not for the control Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)