Bodily bonds: Effects of social context on ideomotor movements

This chapter examines ideomotor movements and investigates the factors that determine whether people produce imitative or compensatory movements while watching other people's actions. It provides a short overview of ideomotor theory, which provides a foundation for the empirical study of ideomotor movements and reviews previous studies that deal with the question of how social context modulates motor resonance. Some of the factors identified as being able to modulate the degree to which motor resonance takes place include the psychological relationship between actor and observer, the nature of their interaction, and the spatial relation of their bodies.