- Abstract
- The dictionary definition, and Dawkins's
(1976) original conception of the meme, both
include the idea that memes are copied from one
person to another by imitation. We therefore
need to be clear what is meant by imitation.
Imitation is distinguished from contagion,
individual learning and various kinds of
non-imitative social learning such as stimulus
enhancement, local enhancement and goal
emulation. True imitation is extremely rare in
animals other than humans, except for birdsong
and dolphin vocalisation, suggesting that they
can have few or no memes. I argue that more
complex human cognitive processes, such as
language, reading, scientific research and so
on, all build in some way on the ability to
imitate, and therefore all these processes are,
or can be, memetic. When we are clear about the
nature of imitation, it is obvious what does and
does not count as a meme. I suggest that we
stick to defining the meme as that which is
passed on by imitation.
-
- Imitation
- There is a long history of research on
imitation in both animal behaviour and human
social psychology (for review see Whiten and
Ham, 1992). In the nineteenth century Darwin
collected many examples of what he took to be
imitation in animals, as did Romanes (1882,
1883) but they did not define what they meant by
imitation. Baldwin (1902) gave imitation a
central role in his theories of evolution,
pointing out that all adaptive processes can be
seen as imitative - perhaps foreshadowing the
universal Darwinism that today enables
comparisons between biological evolution and
memetic evolution (e.g. Dawkins, 1976; Plotkin,
1993). The psychologist, Thorndike (1898), was
possibly the first to provide a clear definition
of imitation as "learning to do an act from
seeing it done".
-
- Thorndike's definition (though confined to
visual information) captures the essential idea
that in imitation a new behaviour is learned by
copying it from someone else. One hundred years
later we can see the importance of this point in
distinguishing imitation from simple contagion
and from other kinds of learning. These other
kinds of learning can be divided roughly into
individual learning and non-imitative social
learning.
-
- Contagion
- The term "contagion" is often associated
with memetics. We may say that certain memes are
contagious, or more contagious than others. We
may treat the spread of memes as comparable with
the spread of infectious or contagious diseases
and use models derived from epidemiology (Lynch,
1996). The term social contagion is often used
to include phenomena that are certainly memetic,
such as the spread of fads, hysterical reactions
(Showalter, 1997), or even suicide (Marsden,
1997). However, the term is used in confusing
ways (Levy & Nail, 1993) and there is one
kind of contagion that we must clearly
distinguish from imitation.
-
- This is what has variously been called
instinctive imitation, imitative suggestion,
social facilitation, coaction, and (simply)
contagion (Whiten & Ham, 1992). Examples in
humans include the spread of yawning, coughing
or laughter. All these behaviours are extremely
contagious. Indeed it can be difficult not to
laugh if everyone around you is already
laughing. This kind of contagion probably relies
on specific stimulus feature detectors which
detect laughing or yawning in someone
else and then trigger the same innate behaviour
as the response. In other animals there are many
examples of contagious vocalisations, such as
alarm calls. Most vertebrates yawn and some
animals, such as chimpanzees, laugh in response
to tickling and play, but contagious laughter
appears to be limited to humans (Provine,
1996).
-
- This kind of contagion is not true
imitation. We can see why by considering
Thorndike's simple definition. Yawning, coughing
and laughing are innate behaviours. When we
start laughing because everyone else is laughing
we have not learned how to do an act. We already
knew how to laugh, and the kind of laugh we make
is not modelled on the laugh we hear. So this
kind of contagion is not imitation and should
not be counted as memetic. ....
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