The Meme Machine

TAKING THE MEME’S EYE VIEW 47
Imitation, contagion, and social learning
The psychologist, Edward Lee Thorndike (1898), was possibly the first to
provide a clear definition of imitation as ‘learning to do an act from seeing it
done’. Thorndike’s definition (although confined to visual information) captures
the essential idea that in imitation a new behaviour is learned by copying it from
someone else. A hundred years later we can see the importance of this point in
distinguishing between contagion, ‘social learning’ and ‘true imitation’.
The term ‘contagion’ is used in many different ways. We may think of ideas
as contagious, and compare the spread of memes with the spread of infectious or
contagious diseases (Lynch 1996). Also the term ‘social contagion’ is used to
describe the spread of behaviours, such as crazes or even suicide, through
society (Levy and Nail 1993; Marsden 1998). However, this is not the kind of
contagion I want to contrast with imitation. Rather, I mean what has variously
been called instinctive imitation, behavioural contagion, social facilitation, coaction,
or (simply) contagion (Whiten and Ham 1992). Unfortunately, social
psychologists often confuse imitation and contagion, or treat them as the same
thing (Grosser et al. 1951; Levy and Nail 1993). However, comparative
psychologists (those comparing animal and human behaviour) have recently
made clear a useful distinction.
Yawning, coughing and laughter are all extremely contagious in humans.
Indeed, it can be difficult not to laugh if everyone around you is already
laughing. This kind of contagion is thought to rely on specific stimulus feature
detectors which detect laughing or yawning in someone else and then trigger the
same innate behaviour as the response. In other animals, alarm calls and other
vocalisations can be contagious, but contagious laughter appears to be limited to
humans (Provine 1996). Other examples include the spread of moods and
emotions through crowds, and the way people will stop to look at something if
they see other people staring.
This kind of contagion is not true imitation. We can see why by considering
Thorndike’s simple definition. Yawning, coughing, laughing, and looking are
innate behaviours. When we start laughing because everyone else is laughing
we have not learned ‘how to do an act’. We already know how to laugh, and the
kind of laugh we make is not modelled on the laugh we hear. So this kind of
contagion is not imitation and should not be counted as memetic.
Then there is social learning (as opposed to individual learning), which is