Face to face: Blocking facial mimicry can selectively impair recognition of emotional expressions

Abstract People spontaneously mimic a variety of behaviors, including emotional facial expressions. Embodied cognition theories suggest that mimicry reflects internal simulation of perceived emotion in order to facilitate its understanding. If so, blocking facial mimicry should impair recognition of expressions, especially of emotions that are simulated using facial musculature. The current research tested this hypothesis using four expressions (happy, disgust, fear, and sad) and two mimicry-interfering manipulations (1) biting on a pen and (2) chewing gum, as well as two control conditions. Experiment 1 used electromyography over cheek, mouth, and nose regions. The bite manipulation consistently activated assessed muscles, whereas the chew manipulation activated muscles only intermittently. Further, expressing happiness generated most facial action. Experiment 2 found that the bite manipulation interfered most with recognition of happiness. These findings suggest that facial mimicry differentially contributes to recognition of specific facial expressions, thus allowing for more refined predictions from embodied cognition theories.

[1]  D. Spalding.  The Principles of Psychology , 1873, Nature.

[2]  Lipps Theodor.  Das Wissen von fremden Ichen , 1907 .

[3]  W. S. Condon,et al.  A segmentation of behavior , 1967 .

[4]  A. Kendon.  Movement coordination in social interaction: some examples described. , 1970, Acta psychologica.

[5]  P. Ekman.  Pictures of Facial Affect , 1976 .

[6]  J. Winn,et al.  Brain , 1878, The Lancet.

[7]  U. Dimberg.  Facial reactions to facial expressions. , 1982, Psychophysiology.

[8]  P. Ekman,et al.  Felt, false, and miserable smiles , 1982 .

[9]  R. Zajonc,et al.  Affect and cognition: The hard interface. , 1985 .

[10]  F. Strack,et al.  Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[11]  A. J. Fridlund,et al.  The Skeletomotor System , 1990 .

[12]  H. Wallbott.  Recognition of emotion from facial expression via imitation? Some indirect evidence for an old theory. , 1991, The British journal of social psychology.

[13]  S. Vrana,et al.  The psychophysiology of disgust: differentiating negative emotional contexts with facial EMG. , 1993, Psychophysiology.

[14]  Dava Davainis,et al.  Individual differences in the effects of spontaneous mimicry on emotional contagion , 1994 .

[15]  M. Farah,et al.  The psychological reality of the body schema: a test with normal participants. , 1995, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[16]  L. Lundqvist,et al.  FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAGIOUS , 1995 .

[17]  E. Hatfield,et al.  Emotional Contagion , 1995 .

[18]  R. Adolphs,et al.  Cortical Systems for the Recognition of Emotion in Facial Expressions , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[19]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. , 1996, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[20]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action recognition in the premotor cortex. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[21]  Does imitation enhance memory for faces? Four converging studies. , 1996, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  S. Goldinger.  Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. , 1998, Psychological review.

[23]  A. Goldman,et al.  Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[24]  R. Ellis,et al.  On the relations between seen objects and components of potential actions. , 1998, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[25]  T. Chartrand,et al.  The chameleon effect: the perception-behavior link and social interaction. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[26]  R. Adolphs,et al.  A Role for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Recognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-Dimensional Lesion Mapping , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[27]  M Jeannerod,et al.  Changes in breathing during observation of effortful actions , 2000, Brain Research.

[28]  F. Strack,et al.  "Mood contagion": the automatic transfer of mood between persons. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  U. Dimberg,et al.  Unconscious Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions , 2000, Psychological science.

[30]  J. Decety,et al.  Functional anatomy of execution, mental simulation, observation, and verb generation of actions: A meta‐analysis , 2001, Human brain mapping.

[31]  P. Niedenthal,et al.  When did her smile drop? Facial mimicry and the influences of emotional state on the detection of change in emotional expression , 2001 .

[32]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action observation activates premotor and parietal areas in a somatotopic manner: an fMRI study , 2001, The European journal of neuroscience.

[33]  D. McFarland.  Respiratory markers of conversational interaction. , 2001, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[34]  Catherine L. Reed,et al.  What is the body schema , 2002 .

[35]  W. Prinz.  Common mechanisms in perception and action. , 2002 .

[36]  J. Danckert.  Common Mechanisms in Perception and Action: Attention and Performance XIX Wolfgang Prinz, Bernhard Hommel (Eds.), Oxford University Press, 2002, Price: £ 65.00, ISBN: 0-19-851069 , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[37]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula The Common Neural Basis of Seeing and Feeling Disgust , 2003, Neuron.

[38]  P. Ekman.  Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life , 2003 .

[39]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: A relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[40]  J. Sommerville,et al.  Shared representations between self and other: a social cognitive neuroscience view , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[41]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.

[42]  A. Goldman,et al.  Simulationist models of face-based emotion recognition , 2005, Cognition.

[43]  R. Adolphs,et al.  Visual emotion perception : mechanisms and processes , 2005 .

[44]  L. Barsalou,et al.  Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion , 2005, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[45]  Jennifer H. Pfeifer,et al.  Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders , 2006, Nature Neuroscience.

[46]  P. Winkielman,et al.  When the social mirror breaks: deficits in automatic, but not voluntary, mimicry of emotional facial expressions in autism. , 2006, Developmental science.

[47]  Georg Goldenberg,et al.  The Neural Basis of Imitation is Body Part Specific , 2006, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[48]  Hermann Lotze.  Medicinische Psychologie, oder, Physiologie der Seele , 2006 .

[49]  B. Mesquita,et al.  The experience of emotion. , 2007, Annual review of psychology.

[50]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  The simulating social mind: the role of the mirror neuron system and simulation in the social and communicative deficits of autism spectrum disorders. , 2007, Psychological bulletin.

[51]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  The skeletomotor system: Surface electromyography. , 2007 .

[52]  Lindsay M. Oberman,et al.  The embodied emotional mind , 2008 .

[53]  Piotr Winkielman,et al.  Embodied Grounding Social , Cognitive , Affective , and Neuroscientific Approaches , 2009 .