Facial mimicry and emotional contagion to dynamic emotional facial expressions and their influence on decoding accuracy (original) (raw)
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Recently, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, using a variety of scientific techniques, have begun to study the influence of attention, facial mimicry, and social context on emotional contagion. In this paper we will review the classic evidence documenting the role of attention, facial mimicry, and feedback in sparking primitive emotional contagion. Then we will discuss the new evidence which scholars have amassed to help us better understand the role of facial mimicry in fostering contagion and the ability to “read” others’ thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Finally, we will briefly speculate as to where future research might be headed.
PLOS ONE, 2016
Facial mimicry is the spontaneous response to others' facial expressions by mirroring or matching the interaction partner. Recent evidence suggested that mimicry may not be only an automatic reaction but could be dependent on many factors, including social context, type of task in which the participant is engaged, or stimulus properties (dynamic vs static presentation). In the present study, we investigated the impact of dynamic facial expression and sex differences on facial mimicry and judgment of emotional intensity. Electromyography recordings were recorded from the corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major, and orbicularis oculi muscles during passive observation of static and dynamic images of happiness and anger. The ratings of the emotional intensity of facial expressions were also analysed. As predicted, dynamic expressions were rated as more intense than static ones. Compared to static images, dynamic displays of happiness also evoked stronger activity in the zygomaticus major and orbicularis oculi, suggesting that subjects experienced positive emotion. No muscles showed mimicry activity in response to angry faces. Moreover, we found that women exhibited greater zygomaticus major muscle activity in response to dynamic happiness stimuli than static stimuli. Our data support the hypothesis that people mimic positive emotions and confirm the importance of dynamic stimuli in some emotional processing.
Mimicry and the judgment of emotional facial expressions
Journal of Nonverbal behavior, 1999
Lipps (1907) presented a model of empathy which had an important influence on later formulations. According to Lipps, individuals tend to mimic an interaction partner's behavior, and this nonverbal mimicry induces—via a feedback process—the corresponding affective state in the observer. The resulting shared affect is believed to foster the understanding of the observed person's self. The present study tested this model in the context of judgments of emotional facial expressions. The results confirm that individuals mimic emotional facial ...
Emotional Mimicry: Why and When We Mimic Emotions
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2014
The goal of this review was to provide a brief overview of recent developments in the domain of emotional mimicry research. We argue that emotional signals are intrinsically meaningful within a social relationship, which is crucial for understanding the functionality and boundary conditions of emotional mimicry. On the basis of a review of the literature on facial mimicry of emotion displays, we conclude that the classic matched motor hypothesis does not hold for emotional mimicry. We alternatively propose a contextual view of emotional mimicry, which states that emotional mimicry depends on the social context: we only mimic emotional signals that are interpreted to promote affiliation goals and not necessarily what we see. As a further consequence, we are less likely to mimic strangers and we do not mimic people we do not like nor emotions that signal antagonism.
Mapping correspondence between facial mimicry and emotion recognition in healthy subjects
Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2012
We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in emotion recognition. For this purpose, in Experiment 1, we explored the effect of tonic contraction of muscles in upper or lower half of participants' face on their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. We found that the "lower" manipulation specifically impaired recognition of happiness and disgust, the "upper" manipulation impaired recognition of anger, while both manipulations affected recognition of fear; recognition of surprise and sadness were not affected by either blocking manipulations. In Experiment 2, we verified whether emotion recognition is hampered by stimuli in which an upper or lower half-face showing an emotional expression is combined with a neutral half-face. We found that the neutral lower half-face interfered with recognition of happiness and disgust, whereas the neutral upper half impaired recognition of anger; recognition of fear and sadness was impaired by both manipulations, whereas recognition of surprise was not affected by either manipulation. Taken together, the present findings support simulation models of emotion recognition and provide insight into the role of mimicry in comprehension of others' emotional facial expressions.
Original Papers Spontaneous Facial Mimicry, Liking and Emotional Contagion
2006
Mimicking expressions is a phylogenetically ancient and basic form of intraspecies communication (Brothers, 1990); it may have been evolutionarily adaptive because it helped humans communicate and foster relationships (Lakin, Jefferis, Cheng, & Chartrand, 2003). When an observer matches the facial expression of another, emotion-related thoughts and feelings may be modulated or initiated in the observer (McIntosh, 1996; McIntosh, Druckman, & Zajonc, 1994). Thus, mimicry appears to play a role in such intertwined and basic social processes as emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1992; Lundquist & Dimberg, 1995; McIntosh et al., 1994; Vaughan & Lanzetta, 1981), dyadic rapport (Capella, 1993), behaviors such as helping and generosity (van Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, & van Knippenberg, 2004), and the perception and interpretation of facial expressions of emotion (Niedenthal, Brauer, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 2001). Moreover, mimicry appears impaired in autism, a disorder of ...
Mimicry as a tool for understanding the emotions of others
Aer, 2010
How do people understand what others are emotionally experiencing? We argue that mimicking the nonverbal expressions of other people (i.e., copying the behaviors of others) can be a tool for facilitating the understanding of the emotions that they are experiencing. People express their emotions nonverbally and when mimicking these nonverbal expressions, this affects the mimickers' emotions correspondingly due to an afferent feedback mechanism. As a result of this mechanism, the mimicker catches the emotions of others more strongly, which facilitates emotion understanding. Implications are discussed for affective computing.
PloS one, 2016
A number of studies have shown that individuals often spontaneously mimic the facial expressions of others, a tendency known as facial mimicry. This tendency has generally been considered a reflex-like "automatic" response, but several recent studies have shown that the degree of mimicry may be moderated by contextual information. However, the cognitive and motivational factors underlying the contextual moderation of facial mimicry require further empirical investigation. In this study, we present evidence that the degree to which participants spontaneously mimic a target's facial expressions depends on whether participants are motivated to infer the target's emotional state. In the first study we show that facial mimicry, assessed by facial electromyography, occurs more frequently when participants are specifically instructed to infer a target's emotional state than when given no instruction. In the second study, we replicate this effect using the Facial Actio...
Emotional Mimicry as Social Regulation
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2013
Emotional mimicry is the imitation of the emotional expressions of others. According to the classic view on emotional mimicry (the Matched Motor Hypothesis), people mimic the specific facial movements that comprise a discrete emotional expression. However, little evidence exists for the mimicry of discrete emotions; rather, the extant evidence supports only valence-based mimicry. We propose an alternative Emotion Mimicry in Context view according to which emotional mimicry is not based on mere perception but rather on the interpretation of signals as emotional intentions in a specific context. We present evidence for the idea that people mimic contextualized emotions rather than simply expressive muscle movements. Our model postulates that (implicit or explicit) contextual information is needed for emotional mimicry to take place. It takes into account the relationship between observer and expresser, and suggests that emotional mimicry depends on this relationship and functions as a social regulator.
Facial expressions are contagious
Journal of Psychophysiology, 9(3), 203-211. , 1995
Explored the facial muscle responses to exposure to stimuli of facial expressions (FEs) that correspond to specific emotional experiences; and whether FEs are contagious. 56 Ss (mean age 26.4 yrs) were exposed individually to slides of males and females from P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen's set (1976) displaying sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and neutral FEs. Bipolar EMG recordings were made on the left side of Ss' faces, with Beckman miniature surface electrodes. Results indicate that different stimuli of FEs of emotion spontaneously elicited different facial EMG reactions. Sad faces evoked significantly larger reactions from the M. corrugator supercili muscle region. Faces expressing surprise evoked significantly larger reactions from frontal M. lateralis region. Angry faces evoked an increased experience of fear and disgust. Ss both mimicked and experienced the same emotion expressed by the stimuli persons.