Some more Mimeticism in Psychology -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 17:27:00 04/06/08 Sun
Author: JD Reed
Subject: Some more Mimeticism in Psychology

In Social Psychology there is a concept called cognitive dissonance. In this concept someone becomes uncomfortable when they see an inconsistency between what one holds to be true and what one knows to be true (such as a perception of the self and the actual self). This is simply a brief overview of what this concept is. With this idea, social psychologists found that minimal rewards and punishments are most effective with people (and especially children). An example is an experiment in which psychologists went to an elementary school and had children look at 5 toys and rate what two they liked best (in order of liking). The experimenter then told the children that he was going to leave the room for 10-15 minutes, in one case he told the children that if they played with the toy they liked second best, he would become extremely angry, take the toys and leave, and never come back (this is an extreme punishment). In the other case, he created a marginal punishment in which he said he would simply be annoyed with the children. Coming back 2 months later, they found that children in the first setting still liked the two same toys in the same amount, yet in the second setting children no longer liked the 2nd best toy as much. The unconscious process that went on was something as follows "if im not really getting punished for playing with the toy, then why am I not playing with the toy? I must not like the toy that much". In a way, this shows that cognitive dissonance in this type of situation is mimetic in a way. Although there is not direct imitation, it is as if the process constantly creates a model in the individual that--as psychologists say--becomes distressing if the model itself is not imitated. Thus it is a sort of suggestive/mimetic process

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