The Impact of Weather on Imitation: A grounded cognition perspective.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect on imitation of ambient environment, the surrounding stimuli and phenomena independent of the task at hand. It argues that ambient environment influences imitation by eliciting a particular kind of cognitive processing, either heuristic or analytical, via individual evaluation along two appraisal dimensions: pleasantness and uncertainty. Such environment-elicited cognitive processing subsequently influences imitation and moderates how individuals use a prior actor’s characteristics in making imitation decisions. By using weather as the ambient environment and earnings forecasts of financial analysts as the task, I find that an analyst is likely to imitate a prior analyst's forecasts in pleasant or stable weather, but will be less likely to rely on these characteristics to make imitation decisions in unpleasant or uncertain weather.