Mimicry, emotion, and social context: insights from typical and atypical humans, robots, and androids

Winkielman, Piotr; Carr, Evan W.; Chakrabarti, Bhismadev; Hofree, Galit; Kavanagh, Liam

doi:10.1017/cbo9781107587595.009

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 98 publications

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“…The studies on automatic imitation found reduced imitation effects for non-human hands. Research on emotion mimicry by contrast found good evidence for strong mimicry to avatars which is also moderated by social context (Likowski et al, 2008;Weyers et al, 2006;Weyers, Mühlberger, Kund, Hess, & Pauli, 2009) and comparable mu suppressions has been found to humans, androids and robots (Urgen, Plank, Ishiguro, Poizner, & Saygin, 2013), Yet other research on robots and androids suggests a more complex moderation of emotion mimicry as a function of context and the "humanity" of the agent (Winkielman, Carr, Chakrabarti, Hofree, & Kavanagh, 2016).…”

Section: Mimicry Enhances Social Standingmentioning

confidence: 91%

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The Role of Emotional Mimicry in Intergroup Relations

Heß¹,

Fischer²

2017

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

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What is the role of emotional mimicry in intergroup relations? There are different theoretical accounts of the function and underlying processes of emotional mimicry. A review of research on emotional mimicry suggests that, in general, emotional mimicry reinforces existing group boundaries, rather than breaking or dissolving them. Specifically, there is consistent evidence that people tend to mimic similar others more than dissimilar others. Given that ingroup members are by definition more similar to each other than to outgroup members, this implies that the former are more likely to be mimicked than the latter. In turn, mimicry improves social bonds with others, which then facilitates ingroup relations. The most primitive and implicit pathway for mimicry is via embodiment, and it can only take place when there is an actual interaction between group members. To the degree that such processes are presumed to be automatic, it is likely that they tend to reinforce social exclusion of outgroup members. By contrast, the most explicit pathway to mimicry is via perspective taking, in which one deliberately tries to take the other’s perspective. This process does not require the actual presence of members of other groups, but some form of empathy when judging or expecting to meet other group members. This process is more amenable to top-down influences. The research on mimicry also converges on the notion that when mimicry (or in fact other forms of behavior matching) is present, interactions can be expected to be more affiliative. Thus, with effort, mimicry can also be a tool for improving intergroup relations. As always, however, it requires more effort to cross group boundaries than to stay within them.

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Section: Mimicry Enhances Social Standingmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…As such, people mimic facial expressions of stick figures (Hess, Hühnel, van der Schalk, & Fischer, 2016), avatars (Weyers et al, 2006), and robots (Winkielman et al, 2016) as well as…”

Section: Emotion Mimicry In Intergroup Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Emotional Mimicry in Intergroup Relations

Heß¹,

Fischer²

2017

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

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“…Mimicry is the process of copying, or "mirroring" the actions of a model, which contributes to social bonding and group formation (Chartrand & Lakin, 2013;. Facial mimicry, in particular, is a ubiquitous process through which emotions are shared and understood by interaction partners (Korb et al, 2014;Winkielman et al, 2016). Furthermore, emotional contagion covertly spreads from person to person through spontaneous facial mimicry (SFM; Dezecache et al, 2013).…”

Section: Facial Mimicry and Social Connectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smile (but only deliberately) though your heart is aching: Loneliness is associated with impaired spontaneous smile mimicry

Arnold

Winkielman

2020

Social Neuroscience

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As social beings, humans harbor an evolved capacity for loneliness-perceived social isolation. Feelings of loneliness are associated with aberrant affective and social processing, as well as deleterious physiological dysregulation. We investigated how loneliness affects spontaneous facial mimicry (SFM), an interpersonal resonance mechanism involved in social connection and emotional contagion. We used facial electromyography (fEMG) to measure activity of the zygomaticus major ("smiling muscle") and corrugator supercilii ("frowning muscle") while participants viewed emotional stimuli, such as video clips of actors expressing anger, fear, sadness, or joy, and emotional IAPS images. We also measured self-reported loneliness, depression, and extraversion levels. Evidence for SFM was found in greater fEMG activity of the zygomaticus and corrugator to positive and negative emotions, respectively. However, individuals reporting higher levels of loneliness lacked SFM for expressions of joy. Loneliness did not affect deliberate mimicry activity to the same expressions, or spontaneous reactions to positive, negative, or neutral IAPS images. Depression and extraversion did not predict any differences in fEMG responses. We argue that impaired automaticity of "smiling back" at another-a faulty interpersonal resonance response-represents a pervasive behavioral mechanism that likely contributes to negative social and emotional consequences of loneliness and may facilitate loneliness contagion.

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“…It would be important to transform them into "embodied mirrors", recruiting imitation neural circuits and thus using mirroring as a form of motor training [5]. In addition, when compared with virtual reality scenarios, robots induce a stronger effect on spontaneous imitation [6]. Therefore, robots can strongly enhance the impact of motor and imitation training.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and validation of two embodied mirroring setups for interactive games with autistic children using the NAO humanoid robot

Geminiani

Santos

Casellato

et al. 2019

2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)

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Socially assistive robots have shown potential benefits in therapy of child and elderly patients with social and cognitive deficits. In particular, for autistic children, humanoid robots could enhance engagement and attention, thanks to their simplified toy-like appearance and the reduced set of possible movements and expressions. The recent focus on autism-related motor impairments has increased the interest on developing new robotic tools aimed at improving not only the social capabilities but also the motor skills of autistic children. To this purpose, we have designed two embodied mirroring setups using the NAO humanoid robot. Two different tracking systems were used and compared: Inertial Measurement Units and the Microsoft Kinect, a marker-less vision based system. Both platforms were able to mirror upper limb basic movements of two healthy subjects, an adult and a child. However, despite the lower accuracy, the Kinect-based setup was chosen as the best candidate for embodied mirroring in autism treatment, thanks to the lower intrusiveness and reduced setup time. A prototype of an interactive mirroring game was developed and successfully tested with the Kinect-based platform, paving the way to the development of a versatile and powerful tool for clinical use with autistic children.

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Mimicry, emotion, and social context: insights from typical and atypical humans, robots, and androids

Cited by 9 publications

References 98 publications

The Role of Emotional Mimicry in Intergroup Relations

The Role of Emotional Mimicry in Intergroup Relations

Smile (but only deliberately) though your heart is aching: Loneliness is associated with impaired spontaneous smile mimicry

Design and validation of two embodied mirroring setups for interactive games with autistic children using the NAO humanoid robot

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