selfimitation

Self-imitation is a term used to describe the repetition of actions that an individual has taken in the past, regardless of current circumstances or external prompts. It can refer to a cognitive-behavioral tendency to imitate one’s own prior behavior in new situations.

In psychology, self-imitation arises from memory, reinforcement learning, habit formation, and cognitive consistency. It can increase efficiency by leveraging known successful actions, reduce decision costs, and support goal maintenance. However, it can also promote perseveration, reduce responsiveness to new information, and hinder adaptation when contexts change. It is related to automaticity and routines, and can be influenced by mood, self-efficacy, and feedback.

In clinical settings, self-imitation may contribute to habit loops or compulsive behaviors in some disorders, but it is not a diagnosis by itself. It is generally described as a normal aspect of how humans rely on prior experience.

In machine learning, self-imitation learning (SIL) is a category of methods where an agent learns from its own past high-return experiences, replaying them to improve policy updates. It can improve sample efficiency and performance in tasks with sparse rewards and long horizons. It is related to imitation learning but uses the agent’s own data rather than external demonstrators. Potential drawbacks include memory demands and risk of overfitting to past trajectories, potentially reducing exploration.

In organizational or cultural contexts, self-imitation can describe strategies that replicate past successes. While it can provide stability, overreliance can hinder innovation and adaptation to changing environments.