You’re on a Zoom call and the other person runs their fingers through their hair and you notice you do it too. Or, your colleague tugs at her necklace and you find yourself doing the same thing.
If you’ve ever caught yourself mindlessly copying someone else, it’s because of something called “mirroring activity” in the human brain.
“One of the ways in which we come to know each other better is we start, often subtly, to behave like each other,” Jim Coan, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, said.
“Mirror neurons” were discovered in monkeys in 1992. Although researchers have identified no similar neurons in humans, similar mirroring activity goes on in the brain’s motor cortex, and it’s important.
The behavior begins early in life. Coan said University of Washington psychology professor Andrew Meltzoff in 1977 discovered infants as young as 42 minutes old can imitate facial expressions.
“It seems to be part of our genetic endowment to seek to behave like those around us,” Coan said. “In doing so, it plugs you into a community of caregivers and, as you grow older, of cooperators. And that is the human ecological niche or habitat. Our habitat is other people,” not a specific terrestrial environment like the African savanna.
The mirroring behavior extends beyond gesticulation and into talking.
Psychology professor Jim Coan is writing a new book on the natural history and neuroscience of social relationships. Norton will publish “Why We Hold Hands” during the 2026 holiday season and feature Coan’s comic illustrations and nonfiction narrative. (University Communications photo)
“I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but … when I travel to England, sometimes I start experiencing myself using an English accent,” Coan said. “It’s super embarrassing because it’s like, ‘Am I affected?’”
Nope. It’s just a human’s attempt to fit in.
“It’s what my brain’s trying to do to help me belong to that context. To understand, be understood,” Coan explained.
A Sense of Self
“Research suggests that people who engage in that kind of imitative behavior, they enjoy each other’s presence more. They have more fluid communication. They’re easier to be around,” Coan said.
There is an asterisk. People are very sensitive to someone else pretending to be part of a group.
“If you feel like someone is imitating you on purpose, oftentimes it’ll make you really angry,” he said. “It’s a powerful way to bond. It’s also a powerful way, if it’s thought to be not genuine … to foster antagonism.”
Mirroring others, Coan said, does not diminish one’s sense of self, for a simple reason.
