Empathy, but not Mimicry Restriction, Influences the Recognition of Change in Emotional Facial Expressions

Abstract

The current study addressed the hypothesis that empathy and the restriction of facial muscles of observers can influence recognition of emotional facial expressions. A sample of 74 participants recognized the subjective onset of emotional facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral) in a series of morphed face photographs showing a gradual change (frame by frame) from one expression to another. The high-empathy (as measured by the Empathy Quotient) participants recognized emotional facial expressions at earlier photographs from the series than did low-empathy ones, but there was no difference in the exploration time. Restriction of facial muscles of observers (with plasters and a stick in mouth) did not influence the responses. We discuss these findings in the context of the embodied simulation theory and previous data on empathy.

Human Empathy, Personality and Experience Affect the Emotion Ratings of Dog and Human Facial Expressions

“…Animal-directed emotional concern (aniEC) mimicked the connection of general EC regarding anger/aggressiveness ratings of Threatening Dogs, and it similarly lead to quicker responses in evaluating Threatening Humans. Recently, emotional empathy has been found to enhance the accuracy [33,34] and speed [73] of recognizing human emotional expressions. In addition, the ratings of emotion intensity also correlate positively with the emotional empathy of the rater [36].…”

“…Observer’s empathic abilities affect their evaluation of emotions from human facial expressions: people with higher empathic scores (usually in emotional empathy or total empathy measures) are more accurate in recognizing emotional facial expressions of other humans [33,34]. They also recognize the emotions earlier [35] and estimate the intensity of the emotions higher [36]. …”

The functions of imitative behaviour in humans

“…However, negative results have also been reported. Both people with Moebius syndrome (who cannot move their face) and those with restricted face motion can perceive facial emotions (Bogart & Matsumoto, 2010;Kosonogov, Titova & Vorobyeva, 2015). Thus, some argue that facial mimicry is important to the perception of emotion (Wood et al, 2016), while others argue that mimicry plays a small role (Tamietto et al, 2009).…”

Recognition of all basic emotions varies in accuracy and reaction time: A new verbal method of measurement

“…We hypothesised that our paradigm would distinguish reactions to basic emotions. Video clips would differentiate participants between each other and emotions between each other better than static pictures do, because some emotions are recognised at earlier frames than others (Kosonogov et al, ). Reaction time measurement would find subtle differences that have not been found with the hit rate measurement (that has a less precise scale).…”

“…Another way to present faces is the so-called morph task. Participants gradually scroll a facial photograph from the neutral expression to an emotion (Niedenthal, Halberstadt, Margolin, & Innes-Ker, 2000) or from one emotion to another (Kosonogov, Titova, & Vorobyeva, 2015) and should indicate at what frame each emotion appears on the face. This way seems less ecological than video clips because in daily life people cannot "scroll" faces of others.…”