Behavioral Mimicry Quotes

It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

Children pay little attention to their parents' teachings, but reproduce their characters faithfully

Contrary to general belief, humans imitate apes more than the reverse. The sight of monkeys or apes induces an irresistible urge in people to jump up and down, exaggeratedly scratch themselves and holler in a way that must make the primates wonder how this otherwise so intelligent species has come to depend on such inferior means of communication.

Kids are sponges. They will emulate what they see and what they're exposed to.

Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.

Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.

Children want to do what grownups do.

A young boy shouldn't be given up for hopeless just because he's lazy, surly, and good for nothing. Don't be discouraged by those things - maybe he's just trying to be like his daddy.

Some follies are caught, like contagious diseases.

A leader's attitude is caught by his or her followers more quickly than his or her actions.

I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood. All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities.

We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.

Man is an imitative creature.

I got a lot of motivation from my character of people-watching. And if they do something that annoys me, I steal it and do it because I know it annoys other people. If it annoys me, it's going to annoy you.

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.

I think we are affected by others in all kinds of ways. I do understand what it's like to wish to control the conditions under which we can be affected by other human beings, but none of us really are.

We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.

In ten minutes they will have arrived on campus. George will have to be George; the George they have named and will recognise. So now he consciously applies himself to thinking their thoughts, getting into their mood. With the skill of a veteran, he rapidly puts on the psychological makeup for this role he must play.

We are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation.

I believe, as they say, that you can't be what you don't see, and since I saw a lot of smart women in my life, education being at the center, I just mimicked that behavior.

If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.

Men take on the nature and the habits and the power of thought of those with whom they associate in a spirit of sympathy and harmony.

Imitation is for the most part so unconscious that its effects are almost unheeded, but its influence is not the less permanent on that account. It is only when an impressive nature is placed in contact with an impressionable one that the alteration in the character becomes recognizable. Yet even the weakest natures exercise some influence upon those about them. The approximation of feeling, thought, and habit is constant, and the action of example unceasing.