Blocking Mimicry Makes True and False Smiles Look the Same

Abstract

Recent research suggests that facial mimicry underlies accurate interpretation of subtle facial expressions. In three experiments, we manipulated mimicry and tested its role in judgments of the genuineness of true and false smiles. Experiment 1 used facial EMG to show that a new mouthguard technique for blocking mimicry modifies both the amount and the time course of facial reactions. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants rated true and false smiles either while wearing mouthguards or when allowed to freely mimic the smiles with or without additional distraction, namely holding a squeeze ball or wearing a finger-cuff heart rate monitor. Results showed that blocking mimicry compromised the decoding of true and false smiles such that they were judged as equally genuine. Together the experiments highlight the role of facial mimicry in judging subtle meanings of facial expressions.

Gender differences in the neural network of facial mimicry of smiles – An rTMS study

“…Since facial mimicry can influence the processing of and judgments about emotional facial expressions (Korb et al, 2014;Niedenthal et al, 2001;Rychlowska et al, 2014), inhibition of M1 was also expected to be associated with lower ratings of perceived happiness in happy faces of the Intensity task, and delayed perception of happiness in Angry-To-Happy videos in the Offset task. This hypothesis was partially confirmed, and results differed by gender.…”

“…Indeed, mimicry of happy faces increases the accuracy of judgments of smile authenticity (Korb, With, Niedenthal, Kaiser, & Grandjean, 2014; but see Hess & Blairy, 2001), and the blocking of facial mimicry reduces the speed and the accuracy of recognizing emotional facial expressions. For example, blocking facial mimicry slows the recognition of positive and negative facial expressions (Stel & van Knippenberg, 2008), impairs the distinction between true and false smiles (Maringer, Krumhuber, Fischer, & Niedenthal, 2011;Rychlowska et al, 2014), delays the perception of the offset of happy and sad facial expressions (Niedenthal, Brauer, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 2001), and interferes with the recognition of happiness (Oberman, Winkielman, & Ramachandran, 2007). Furthermore, paralysis of the Corrugator muscle through injections of botulinum toxin decreases responses to angry faces in emotion centers of the brain such as the amygdala, and reduces the functional coupling between the amygdala and brain stem regions implicated in autonomic emotional responses (Hennenlotter et al, 2009).…”

Altering sensorimotor feedback disrupts visual discrimination of facial expressions

“…with which the perceiver identifies the emotion expressed by the stimulus face, especially for subtle or ambiguous expressions (Rychlowska et al, 2014).…”

“…To date, the tasks used to document effects of facial mimicry on expression processing have involved the generation of emotion word labels for the face percepts (Neal & Chartrand, 2011), evaluation of the emotional meanings of expressions (Rychlowska et al, 2014;Stel & van Knippenberg, 2008), or explicit identification of the onset or offset of an emotional expression (Niedenthal, Brauer, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 2001). However, by measuring Bemotion recognition^with verbal judgment tasks, existing research is unable to separate the potential roles of the sensorimotor processes for visual processing and for higher-level linguistic/conceptual processing of emotion expressions.…”

“…The difference between an eyebrow raise of derision and one of sadness is perceptually subtle, but conceptually and behaviorally consequential. Growing evidence suggests that the sensorimotor activity in facial muscles that occurs automatically during perception of a facial expression may contribute to the efficient and accurate processing of the visual input (Ponari, Conson, D'Amico, Grossi, & Trojano, 2012;Rychlowska et al, 2014).…”