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The acquisition of cultural beliefs and practices is fundamental to human societies. The psychological and neural mechanisms underlying cultural acquisition, however, are not well understood. Here we used brain imaging to investigate how others’ physical and sociocultural attributes may influence imitative learning, a critical component of cultural acquisition. While undergoing fMRI, 17 European American young adults imitated models from three different racial groups performing novel hand gestures. Participants learned that half the models shared their political ideology and half did not. We found that the model’s political ideology—a sociocultural characteristic devoid of any physical correlates—was sufficient to influence imitative accuracy, and that this effect was mediated by changes in feelings of similarity to the model. Furthermore, the relationship between the imitative model’s political ideology and …