Mimicry or alcohol - Assignment Example

Mimicry Affiliation: The wanted to study whether human beings with all their empathy could mimic the actions and behavior of people in the out group as well as they would those in the in group. They further wanted to determine whether the mimicry behavior was a culturally learnt aspect and whether it was possible to change it and hence end prejudice (Inzlicht, Gutsell and Legault, 2012). The research question posed is whether mimicry will help to better or worsen the perception of the people in the out groups?

The other research question is whether the perceptions of the people in the out group will help reduce prejudice in that group?The hypothesis of the research was that mimicking the out group by the participants would lead to less explicit as well as implicit prejudice compared to mimicking the in group or even passively observing the out group (Inzlicht, Gutsell and Legault, 2012). The participants of the study were non-black participants all of who were undergraduates and hence educated. The females were 37 while the male were 26.

Their mean age was 18 years. Their assignment to the subject conditions was made randomly. There were three subject conditions as mentioned in the hypothesis and they were: out group mimicry, in group mimicry as well as the out group observation. The procedure for the three groups involved watching a video of men drinking water. The first group (out group mimicry) had water glasses placed in front of them while the out group observation had no water but both watched videos of black men. As for the in group participants, they watched the same video complete with water glasses but the actors were non-black (Inzlicht, Gutsell and Legault, 2012).

The results indicate that both the in group mimicry and the out group mimicry showed the same reaction towards their race. The results of the out group observation yielded similar results with the in group mimicry. The results are in accordance with the hypothesis and support it fully. The conclusion of the study was that mimicry is a culturally learnt behavior and could be unlearnt. This was concluded based on the fact that the out group that merely observed had the same reaction towards the video as that in the in group even though they were watching black people while the in group watched non-blacks (Inzlicht, Gutsell and Legault, 2012).

I totally agree with the conclusion because the evidence of the research study is quite clear. If the same in group can have the similar reaction to the out group even though they just observed their behavior without mimicking it, then it means they can mimicry them as well. What is hindering people from ending prejudice in the society is the fact that cultures have taught people to be prejudicial towards those in the out group but be more accommodative in the in group. If this culture can be changed, then the prejudicial perceptions can be eliminated completely.

The criticism with the research study is that the conclusion is based purely on assumption that the blacks or any other race would react the same way the non-blacks reacted towards the video. The researchers forget that geographical location also changes the perceptions of people towards prejudice and hence may be more accommodative. ReferencesInzlicht, M., Gutsell, J. and Legault, L. (2012, January). Mimicry reduces racial prejudice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 361-365.