Mimicry boosts social bias: unrealistic optimism in a health prevention case

ABSTRACT

Unrealistic optimism bias appears when a person perceives oneself – in comparison to peers – as less at risk from threats. This bias has been widely reported and the consequences are clear: it puts one’s health in danger. The existing body of literature proposes egocentrism as a mechanism leading to a reduction in this bias. The present paper tests a novel mechanism orienting a person toward others – thus linked with egocentrism – i.e., mimicry. Results showed directly opposing effects: mimicry induced a stronger tendency to perceive oneself as less threatened. This result is not only surprising but especially alarming since mimicry may be used in patient-doctor dialogue which may backfire, leading to resistance to medical recommendations provided by the doctor.

KEYWORDS:

• Mimicry
• unrealistic optimism
• COVID-19
• coronavirus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Databases and statistical protocols are publicly available at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/n35dc/).

Ethical committee statement

All experiments were reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Wroclaw, Poland (08/P/03/2020). Informed consent was obtained from all participants before enrollment in the experimental procedures and data collection.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by: The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) within the Urgency Grants programme granted to Wojciech Kulesza (number: PPN/GIN/2020/1/00063/U/00001).