Crowd Noise and Mimicry

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Abstract
It was hypothesized that increasing the sound level of the emotional expressions of a crowd would heighten arousal in observers and enhance their performance of dominant mimetic responses. Observers viewed a videotaped arm wrestling match under two levels of crowd noise (high and low). The results show that the observers' arm activity was greater under high level than low level crowd noise; this difference was most apparent after a brief time period. In addition, arousal (as measured by skin conductance) was greater under high level than low level crowd noise. These findings are interpreted in terms of drive and ideomotor theories.

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