The Teacher in All of Us
An explanation of behavioral science’s imitation theories and reasoning how the world is shaped by us enacting others.
Do you remember the way you used to interact with your teachers? I know I do. I used to call my third grade teacher “mom”, though she wasn’t, and I’d watch every movie my eighth grade’s English teacher talked about. Even my twelve grade’s Math teacher’s jargon wasn’t safe from my copying! I’ve got to admit that many of her manners still reside within mine to this date.
While in college, I inherited my professor’s theater directing style, and now… Now — as a teacher myself — I see all these things repeatedly. The difference? I became the imitated mentor. Why do we imitate? Some say imitation is the highest form of flattery, while others argue that it shows ordinariness and lack of creativity. But how true is one or the other?
Imitation, by, is to follow a pattern, model, or example. So… could we argue that it’s a way to let go of our own identity? If so, can we control this impulse? As a theater artist, let me tell you one thing ahead: should it not be because of imitation, we would not have diversity, growth, or even meaningful art at all. It is a lesser known fact that meaning that we’ll develop our character until the day we die. This is an interesting factor to consider. We change so much in a year, so can you imagine how many transformations we experience over?
Behavioral scientists’ theories like those of George Herbert Mead, Gabriel Tarde, and Albert Bandura collide in the same argument: we learn through imitating external influences. In simpler words: by copying others. Naturally, there’s an imperative that has to be answered. Do we ever run out of influences to sustain our growth? Like… will we get to “see it all” before we die or are we doomed to not fully develop?
With the latter point, I invite you to marinate on how influenced we really are. There’s not one functional adult that has gone without manipulations of any sort from childhood to adulthood. Therefore, confusion arises… Do we cease to be ourselves to imitate others? Moreover, is there an artform with any exponent who can defend a “never before seen…”, “unheard of…” or “out of this world…” title? Some may believe these theorists served us a contradiction in logic’s platter… but maybe that is not the case.
Because we’re all bound to be molded by our surroundings, it’s worth asking how we ever came up with the terms “originality” or “creativity”. Are those concepts even a thing?! If asked what attire resembles a business person, we’d surely reply with a description of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “The Wolf of Wall Street”. But a TV producer is no less of a business person, and I’ve hardly met one that dresses in such a style. Likewise, if we’re asked common adjectives for an artist, it’s the norm to hear “creative”, “talented”, “starving” and even “uncomprehended” amongst the selection.
George Herbert Mead’s postulates:
You see, when imitating, we begin to understand the expectations of those around us and use that understanding to create our identities. Moreover, we create social structures tethered to cover the roles in our social plays. This is explained by G. Herbert Mead’s symbolic interactionism. In his theory of the “generalized other”, he argues social behavior and identity are developed through social interactions. Furthermore, Herbert explains imitation’s important role on self consciousness.
How does this work? In the process of interacting with others, we hone the concept of the self by role-playing. This is exemplified when children are playing and flex their undeveloped biceps — imitating TV’s most influential superheroes — as a code to represent strength. Whenever we gossip on the phone and turn, raise our legs and twist them in Regina George’s style… And everytime we sadly tilt the face to the windshield, as if in a dramatic scene of a music video.
We don’t realize it, but our identities are a mosaic of the countless imitations we partake alongside the rest of society. Much like Finding Nemo, it seems quite an odyssey to understand where our individuality is in all this. Firstly, it’s important to understand a basic principle. These behaviors are the means to navigating our demeanor in any given circumstance. They work by giving us a sense of belonging and proving our understanding of the social codes.
We realize that a character is into the secret information they’re receiving because of their actions, so whenever we feel like that, we take their posture. And we understand the social cue implied by someone depressingly looking through the windshield, therefore, we enact it to let others know of our state. This means we consciously cherry-pick what to imitate — thus making our personality’s mosaic an unique product of our development. Herbert Mead’s concept of the generalized other simply points out the way we understand ourselves by the perception we think others have of us.
Gabriel Tarde’s Imitation Laws:
My students’ acceptance to new ideas relies solely on how others act to their reaction to them — which links Gabriel Tarde’s work on imitations and trends to Herber’s postulates. The french sociologist and social psychologist gives us, explaining how new ideas are spread. His laws state the channels for upcoming ideas are: through someone of close contact, through the imitation of superiors by inferiors, or by insertion (the introduction of new societal norms).
To set out an example that better explains this, I’d like to share one of my experiences. As any teacher is aware of, creating projects that both attract and reinforce learning continuity at home can prove to be challenging. By understanding Tarde’s law, I got an opening to channel new ideas in a way that embedded the concepts I taught to my student’s social dynamics.
A while ago, there was a project I assigned to my alumns after discussing Theater History. I wanted to evaluate their understanding of different theater styles and their predominant genres. Asking them to present a short monologue — integrating elements of the genre assigned — made them nervous. Some even told me they weren’t going to do it.
Since being trendy is highly valued in their social circles, it places the influencer in a position of power. I decided to use what I call “the viral trigger”. This is a response mechanism I’ve observed in my students, where the chance to participate in viral trends motivates them. It’s an engaging social incentive that reinforces the desire to imitate what is popular, while secretly luring them into academic productiveness.
To achieve this, I changed the assignment. The task became creating and editing a viral trend from TikTok — using their assigned genre as a medium. I won’t go into much details, but it must be noted it was the first assignment where it was delivered by 100% of my students before its due date. Also, I noticed that this reward triggered attributes their normal selves didn’t possess. Few became more extroverted, some turned daring and I noticed others got invested in topics they had declared as boring.
This perfectly illustrates Tarde’s second law. How, you may ask? Because what allowed the new idea — of presenting in front of a public — wasn’t because of bonus points. (I’d offered that before and it hadn’t worked.) It was the chance of imitating the figures they looked up that made the dynamic too attractive to miss — even though they still presented in front of the class.
By this, I believe it’s important to question whether imitation counters originality or not. After all, it is possible to have more than a thousand varieties of the same plant or animal species, therefore, biology is the greatest example of all. Imitating is an adaptation in its most original costume. It is the enabler my teen worrywarts desperately needed to deliver their projects!
Furthermore, when thinking of whether tracing a drawing or copying some transitions in our choreography is artful enough, we should see it differently. Imitation is an invisible force that molds our collective culture, and births the world’s mavericks. Needless to say, I am not proposing a free pass at plagiarism. As a matter of fact — with my students — I’ve ceased to grade originality and have began evaluating their understanding in citation and referencing accurately. This is otherwise known as valuing how skillful they adapt old ideas to their current predicament.
Israel (Talo) Ramírez’s Stages of Innovative Imitation:
They say everyone’s a world, but are we? When we think of innovation, the invention of the wheel must come to mind. After all, it’s the most important invention of all time. Yet, unbeknownst to us, the wheel has been reinvented countless times. Sure, you know of the big spinning machines on amusement parks, of Washington’s ferries and even of a mouse’s spinning contractions.
But — when thinking of a wheel — do we ever picture it as a screwdriver, a watch, a printer, a camera or even a microwave? Probably not, but all those things are the reinventions of the original model of the wheel. Would we dare call them unoriginal, or unconventional? Of course not! Most likely we’d call them useful, practical and important.
The wheel was invented already, but by imitating its design we’ve come to innovate on it! Imitation worked in such a way it transformed the wheel to objects that don’t serve as a transport, but to very different purposes.
That’s why, though many see imitation as counterproductive, I believe it to be the way of showcasing our originality. Through this, I’ve narrowed the stages we go through to innovate by imitating into three:
- Perspective: Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, we enjoy our free will. We have a plethora to choose from. It can go from driving with one hand on the steering wheel to eating just with spoons. The first stage is our selective criteria — our perspective on what we see’s worth — and the moment we “pick the apple” to give it a decisive bite.
- Development: After “biting the apple, we consume it. This is the stage where we realize whether to become fans or haters. At this moment, we question the convenience of imitating the selected idea or action. Whether it is realizing if I’d rather use hook grips or train my grip strength, or if I’m more into protein bars rather than protein shakes… We go through this profound thinking process.
- Improvement: Finally, as we finish “digesting the apple”, we wave goodbye the unwanted parts. Then, the aspects we deemed nurturing will get mixed with our newfound needs. Like, after you unconsciously drive with your left arm on the steering wheel because a conscious part of you feels more comfortable in that position. Or when you use hook grips while training your grip strength to keep on improving. Arriving at the latest stage: making your own what once was an action you merely copied.
Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory:
At this point, we definitely understand the relevance of direct instructions. But to fully grasp the role observation plays, Albert Bandura’s theory must be acknowledged. If we take a broader look into this “imitation makes the world go around” ideology, it would serve us well to talk about the social learning theory.
Bandura developed a Bobo Doll Experiment that explains his postulate in a simple manner. In his experiment, children watched an adult behave aggressively towards an inflatable Bobo doll. Then, they were allowed to interact with it. Results showed that the children who observed the aggressive behavior were more likely to replicate it.
Now, I know what you are thinking. “We can’t control the impulse of imitating others!” But you don’t need to worry! Should we imitate everything we observed, we’d become smokers after the first person we saw on a cigarette. The central part of Bandura’s theory — resembling much of my postulate — is our free will. There’s a teacher in all of us, and we all know that — sadly — most of the things our teachers taught us are no longer remembered by us.
What does remain in our minds are both the elements that we constantly practice, and our traumatic ones. I use that word with huge flexibility. Trauma does tend to be heard and received with the exclusive meaning of a bad situation. But there are very positive traumas in our lives. It definitely hurt when we learned about the holocaust and racism, but through those devastating discoveries we formed a moral conscience.
Returning to the kids in the Bobo Doll’s Experiment: though many were likely to replicate the aggressiveness, notice it wasn’t every single one of them. Yes, we learn through our examples, but we can grow apart from them as well. Therefore, even if we are conditioned to become collages of pieces of our world, we still get to choose our medium, the pieces’ sizes and the technique employed.
As I conclude this postulate on imitation and the way the world is shaped by it, I bear one last argument for your consideration. If I haven’t convinced you yet to jump to the other side, think about theater.
As theater’s origins dictate, it serves the purposes of educating, criticizing, triggering change and — you know it — talking for the people! There’s no debate about whether theater is an artform or not. So this begets an amazing statement. Theater is an art, not because we create stories that have never been seen before, but because theater’s purpose is to enact the people’s reality.
We, actors, directors and playwrights, can’t deliver on any of our artistic and moral duties if not by narrating society’s issues. Imitation proves to be the backbone of our form of creativity. In theater we create art not by making things anew, but by allowing the world to see their own story through someone else’s eyes. Better explained: we shape our most unique acts by choosing what of others is worth imitating.
There is a teacher in all of us, and — since the world is full of teachers — we are students of the world surrounding us. Whether we role-play, channel it through an influential figure or learn it by example, we will develop by the little patches accumulated throughout our lives. There’s also a creative mind in each of us who’s wallowing the halls of imitation. The question is… Will you dare to copy others and who do you deem worth it?
