Minimising motor mimicry by myself: Self-focus enhances online action control mechanisms under motor contagion

Ideomotor theory of human action control proposes that activation of a motor representation can occur either through internally intended or externally perceived actions. Critically, sometimes these two ways of eliciting a motor response may be conflicting, for example when intending one action and perceiving another, necessitating the recruitment of enhanced action control processes to avoid motor mimicry. Based on previous evidence, suggesting that reduced motor mimicry is associated with self-related processing, we aimed at enhancing these action control mechanisms during motor contagion experimentally by an induction of self-focus. In two within-subjects experiments, participants had to enforce their action intention against an external motor contagion tendency, either under heightened or normal self-focus. As predicted, selffocus reduced motor mimicry under both induction methods. Our findings indicate that self-focus is able to enhance online action control mechanisms needed to resist unintentional motor contagion, thus enabling a modulation of automatic mirroring responses.