ABSTRACT
Wide disagreement as to the psychology of imitation. The psychology of imitation is in a somewhat chaotic state, partly owing to the ambiguity of the term and partly owing to disagreement as to facts. At times, imitation is taken to cover the imitation of ideas and even of feelings, but more usually the term refers only to actions, and it is in this sense we shall chiefly discuss it. The imitation of ideas will be dealt with under ‘ Suggestion ’, and that of feelings under ‘ Sympathy ’, or ‘ Sympathetic Induction of Emotions \
Let me first illustrate the divergence of views among leading psychologists. Thorndike 1 quotes Kirkpatrick, Stout and others as examples of upholders of a widespread view that ‘ the child makes every gesture that he sees and every sound that he hears ’ : and adds that any who seem to have said th a t4 behaviour witnessed produces identical behaviour by any original potency ’ ‘ cannot, if possessed of any sense for fact, have meant what they said \ ‘ Sit before an infant ’, writes Thorndike, ‘ and perform time after time a score of such novel but simple acts as putting your right hand on your head and your left on your right shoulder. He does not in nine cases out of ten do anything more like the act you perform than like any other of the twenty/
En revanche, Drever says: * So much of our own learning is done by way of imitation, so much of the untutored teaching of parents, civilized and savage alike, is based on imitation, so much of the teaching and training of their young on the part of the lower animals rests on the same basis, that it is difficult to believe that Thorndike means to deny that there is an instinctive tendency to imitate, in the sense in which this has always been assumed. If he does, we cannot help regarding his view as an almost incredibly arbitrary distortion, and even flouting, of the facts, in order to support a theory which has not even simplicity to recommend it.’2
