Reluctance against the machine: Retrieval of observational stimulus–response episodes in online settings emerges when interacting with a human, but not with a computer partner

Observing how another person responds to a stimulus creates stimulus–response (SR) episodes. These can be retrieved from memory on later occasions, which means that observed responses are utilized for regulating one’s own actions. Until now, evidence for storage and retrieval of observationally acquired SR episodes was limited to dyadic face-to-face interactions between two partners who respond in an alternating fashion. In two preregistered studies (total N = 252), we demonstrate for the first time that observational SR episodes can also be acquired in online interactions: Robust retrieval effects emerged when observers believe to be interacting with another person. In turn, retrieval effects were absent when observers believe to be interacting with a computer. Our findings show that feature-based binding and retrieval principles are pervasive and also apply to social interactions, even under purely virtual conditions. We discuss implications of our findings for different explanatory accounts of social modulations of automatic imitation. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-022-02058-4.