Imitation

Since antiquity, the term ‘imitation’ has been used promiscuously in biology and everyday life. Anything that makes some individuals look or act like others has been called imitation, from the evolutionary process that makes edible butterflies look like their inedible cousins (better known as Batesian mimicry), to the rag-bag of psychological processes that make people wear similar clothes, eat in the same restaurants, and use the same gestures for communication. In this Primer, Cecilia Heyes explains why imitation is thought to be a mark of cognitive complexity and an inheritance mechanism for cumulative culture. Recent research involving birds, ‘enculturated’ chimpanzees, and humans suggests that the cognitive mechanisms that make imitation possible are constructed during development through social interaction.