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Description: Participants in social interactions often imitate one another, thereby enhancing their affiliation. We address outstanding questions about the nature and early development of imitation-based affiliation, through studies of infants' responses to participants in imitative interactions that the infants observed as third parties. Four experiments provide evidence that preverbal infants preferentially attend to and approach individuals who imitate others. This preferential engagement is elicited by the elements of mimicry in simple acts of helping. It does not, however, extend to the targets of imitation in these interactions. This set of findings suggests infants’ imitation-based preferences are not well explained by homophily, prestige, or familiarity. We propose instead that infants perceive imitation as an indicator of valuable attributes in a potential social partner, including the capacity and motivation for social attention and coordinated action.