The validated mimicry and action-response video library (MARVL)

Mimicry, the automatic tendency to imitate others, informs our impressions of interaction partners in social situations. In recent years, researchers have expanded the study of social impression formation beyond impressions of a single individual and towards how we form impressions of multiple individuals through observing their interactions with each other. Mimicry, as a ubiquitous phenomenon of nonverbal social interaction, is very likely to play a part in the formation of such encounter-based impressions of multiple others. The mimicry and action response video library (MARVL) aims at expanding the possibilities of researchers to study third-party inferences based on observing behavioral mimicry and other nonverbal action-response patterns in dyadic interactions. It provides a set of interaction videos of multiple dyads, both male and female, addresses relevant confounds, and features movements both within and across effector systems (arm and leg movements). A planned set of studies that will be reported in following iterations of this preprint will aim to validate the MARVL and enable its use in studies on observed mimicry, action-response patterns, as well as social impression formation more generally.