Emotional Empathy as Related to Mimicry Reactions at Different Levels of Information Processing

The hypotheses of this investigation were based on conceiving of facial mimicry reactions in face-to-face interactions as an early automatic component in the process of emotional empathy. Differences between individuals high and low in emotional empathy were investigated. The parameters compared were facial mimicry reactions, as represented by electromyographic (EMG) activity, when individuals were exposed to pictures of angry or happy faces. The present study distinguished between spontaneous facial reactions and facial expressions associated with more controlled or modulated emotions at different information processing levels, first at a preattentive level and then consecutively at more consciously controlled levels: 61 participants were exposed to pictures at three different exposure times (17, 56, and 2350 ms). A significant difference in facial mimicry reactions between high- and low-empathy participants emerged at short exposure times (56 ms), representing automatic, spontaneous reactions, with high-empathy participants showing a significant mimicking reaction. The low-empathy participants did not display mimicking at any exposure time. On the contrary, the low-empathy participants showed, in response to angry faces, a tendency to an elevated activation in the cheek region, which often is associated with smiling.     

Judging Facial Emotion Expressions in Context: The Influence of Culture and Self-Construal Orientation

We assessed the impact of social context on the judgment of emotional facial expressions as a function of self-construal and decoding rules. German and Greek participants rated spontaneous emotional faces shown either alone or surrounded by other faces with congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Greek participants were higher in interdependence than German participants. In line with cultural decoding rules, Greek participants rated anger expressions less intensely and sad and disgust expressions more intensely. Social context affected the ratings by both groups in different ways. In the more interdependent culture (Greece) participants perceived anger least intensely when the group showed neutral expressions, whereas sadness expressions were rated as most intense in the absence of social context. In the independent culture (Germany) a group context (others expressing anger or happiness) additionally amplified the perception of angry and happy expressions. In line with the notion that these effects are mediated by more holistic processing linked to higher interdependence, this difference disappeared when we controlled for interdependence on the individual level. The findings confirm the usefulness of considering both country level and individual level factors when studying cultural differences.     

Sad and Lonely? Sad Mood Suppresses Facial Mimicry

The aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of happy and sad mood on facial muscular reactions to emotional facial expressions. Following film clips intended to induce happy and sad mood states, participants observed faces with happy, sad, angry, and neutral expressions while their facial muscular reactions were recorded electromyografically. Results revealed that after watching the happy clip participants showed congruent facial reactions to all emotional expressions, whereas watching the sad clip led to a general reduction of facial muscular reactions. Results are discussed with respect to the information processing style underlying the lack of mimicry in a sad mood state and also with respect to the consequences for social interactions and for embodiment theories.     

A Fake Smile Thwarts Cheater Detection

People can discriminate cheaters from cooperators on the basis of negative facial expressions. However, such cheater detection is far from perfect in real-world situations. Therefore, it is possible that cheaters have the ability to disguise negative emotional expressions that signal their uncooperative attitude. To test this possibility, emotional intensity and trustworthiness were evaluated for facial photographs of cheaters and cooperators defined by scores in an economic game. The facial photographs had either posed happy or angry expressions. The angry expressions of cheaters were rated angrier and less trustworthy than those of cooperators. On the other hand, happy expressions of cheaters were higher in emotional intensity but comparable to those of cooperators in trustworthiness. These results suggest that cheater detection based on the processing of negative facial expressions can be thwarted by a posed or fake smile, which cheaters put on with higher intensity than cooperators.     

Effects of Activated and Dispositional Self-Construal on Emotion Decoding Accuracy

The present study examined effects of temporarily salient and chronic self-construal on decoding accuracy for positive and negative facial expressions of emotion. We primed independent and interdependent self-construal in a sample of participants who then rated the emotion expressions of a central character (target) in a cartoon showing a happy, sad, angry, or neutral facial expression in a group setting. Primed interdependence was associated with lower recognition accuracy for negative emotion expressions. Primed and chronic self-construal interacted such that for interdependence primed participants, higher chronic interdependence was associated with lower decoding accuracy for negative emotion expressions. Chronic independent self-construal was associated with higher decoding accuracy for negative emotion. These findings add to an increasing literature that highlights the significance of perceivers’ socio-cultural factors, self-construal in particular, for emotion perception.     

The role of empathy in training social work students in motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing (MI), an evidence-based approach with empathy as a key principle, effectively addresses client concerns found in the child welfare population. Training social workers in MI, and to be empathic, would increase the likelihood of better service delivery. Live supervision (LS) is a form of training that provides real-time feedback by clinical supervisors. This randomized comparison trial compared the effectiveness of LS or Teaching as Usual (TAU) on empathy in 54 MSW and BSW social work students. TAU involved students receiving online modules and assigned readings. Data were collected at baseline, after the interventions, and at five months follow-up. Differences in perceived empathy and empathic behaviors were measured by the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity (MITI) and Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ). The study also assessed whether demographic variables or perceived empathy (TEQ) predicted empathic behaviors (MITI). Results indicate that, while both groups improved on empathy as measured by the MITI and TEQ, the LS group demonstrated more improvement. Demographic variables had no impact on empathy. The TEQ and MITI also did not demonstrate predictability suggesting the complexity of measuring empathy. The implications for social work education and future training are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Processing Facial Identity and Emotional Expression in 8‐Month‐Old Infants

In Experiment 1, it was investigated whether infants process facial identity and emotional expression independently or in conjunction with one another. Eight‐month‐old infants were habituated to two upright or two inverted faces varying in facial identity and emotional expression. Infants were tested with a habituation face, a switch face, and a novel face. In the switch faces, a new combination of identity and emotional expression was presented. The results show that infants differentiated between switch and habituation faces only in the upright condition but not in the inverted condition. Experiment 2 provides evidence that infants’ nonresponse in the inverted condition can be attributed to their independent processing of facial identity and emotional expression. This suggests that infants in the upright condition processed facial identity and emotional expression in conjunction with one another.     

Hearts and Minds: Aspects of Empathy and Wellbeing in Social Work Students

Although empathy is critical to social work practice, the extent to which it can be measured, nurtured or taught is hotly debated. Furthermore, definitions of empathy are typically one-dimensional referring to the ability to adopt the perspective of others in order to understand their feelings, thoughts or actions. Such definitions do not adequately reflect the realities of empathy in the social work context or recognise its potential to lead to distress. This study utilises data from 359 social work students to examine relationships between several dimensions of empathy (i.e. perspective taking, concern and distress), reflective ability and wellbeing with a view to using the findings to develop evidence-based interventions to help staff develop appropriate empathic responses to service users' experiences. Whilst students reported fairly high levels of empathic concern, they also disclosed considerable empathic distress. Some evidence was found that reflective ability might protect social work students from empathic distress. Findings suggest that students require support to develop their empathic and reflective skills to effectively manage the emotional demands of practice. The use of techniques such as mindfulness and experiential learning for enhancing such skills is explored.     

Emotion Recognition in Nonverbal Face-to-Face Communication

The perception of emotional facial expressions may activate corresponding facial muscles in the receiver, also referred to as facial mimicry. Facial mimicry is highly dependent on the context and type of facial expressions. While previous research almost exclusively investigated mimicry in response to pictures or videos of emotional expressions, studies with a real, face-to-face partner are still rare. Here we compared facial mimicry of angry, happy, and sad expressions and emotion recognition in a dyadic face-to-face setting. In sender-receiver dyads, we recorded facial electromyograms in parallel. Senders communicated to the receivers—with facial expressions only—the emotions felt during specific personal situations in the past, eliciting anger, happiness, or sadness. Receivers mostly mimicked happiness, to a lesser degree, sadness, and anger as the least mimicked emotion. In actor-partner interdependence models we showed that the receivers’ own facial activity influenced their ratings, which increased the agreement between the senders’ and receivers’ ratings for happiness, but not for angry and sad expressions. These results are in line with the Emotion Mimicry in Context View, holding that humans mimic happy expressions according to affiliative intentions. The mimicry of sad expressions is less intense, presumably because it signals empathy and might imply personal costs. Direct anger expressions are mimicked the least, possibly because anger communicates threat and aggression. Taken together, we show that incidental facial mimicry in a face-to-face setting is positively related to the recognition accuracy for non-stereotype happy expressions, supporting the functionality of facial mimicry.     

Secrets and Lies: Involuntary Leakage in Deceptive Facial Expressions as a Function of Emotional Intensity

Darwin (1872) hypothesized that some facial muscle actions associated with emotion cannot be consciously inhibited, particularly when the to-be concealed emotion is strong. The present study investigated emotional “leakage” in deceptive facial expressions as a function of emotional intensity. Participants viewed low or high intensity disgusting, sad, frightening, and happy images, responding to each with a 5 s videotaped genuine or deceptive expression. Each 1/30 s frame of the 1,711 expressions (256,650 frames in total) was analyzed for the presence and duration of universal expressions. Results strongly supported the inhibition hypothesis. In general, emotional leakage lasted longer in both the upper and lower face during high-intensity masked, relative to low-intensity, masked expressions. High intensity emotion was more difficult to conceal than low intensity emotion during emotional neutralization, leading to a greater likelihood of emotional leakage in the upper face. The greatest and least amount of emotional leakage occurred during fearful and happiness expressions, respectively. Untrained observers were unable to discriminate real and false expressions above the level of chance.     

How the Experience of Emotion is Modulated by Facial Feedback

The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial actions modulate subjective experiences of emotion. Using the voluntary facial action technique, in which the participants react with instruction induced smiles and frowns when exposed to positive and negative emotional pictures and then rate the pleasantness of these stimuli, four questions were addressed in the present study. The results in Experiment 1 demonstrated a feedback effect because participants experienced the stimuli as more pleasant during smiling as compared to when frowning. However, this effect was present only during the critical actions of smiling and frowning, with no remaining effects after 5 min or after 1 day. In Experiment 2, feedback effects were found only when the facial action (smile/frown) was incongruent with the presented emotion (positive/negative), demonstrating attenuating but not enhancing modulation. Finally, no difference in the intensity of produced feedback effect was found between smiling and frowning, and no difference in feedback effect was found between positive and negative emotions. In conclusion, facial feedback appears to occur mainly during actual facial actions, and primarily attenuate ongoing emotional states.     

Identifying Mental Disorder from the Faces of Women with Borderline Personality Disorder

Although appearance-based cues can help to diagnose physical illness, visual manifestations of mental disorder may be more elusive. Here, we investigated whether individuals could distinguish women with a serious mental disorder (borderline personality disorder) from demographically- and IQ-matched non-psychiatric controls. Participants rated mentally ill targets as more likely to have a mental disorder from photos more accurately than chance, despite not believing that such judgments were possible. The configuration of facial cues played an important role in these judgments, as interfering with the spatial relationships between facial features reduced participants’ accuracy to chance guessing. Further investigation showed similar results when participants rated the targets for specific mental disorders (borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder) and rated the mentally ill targets as more depressed, angry, anxious, disgusted, emotionally unstable, distressed, and less happy. Moreover, the depression ratings significantly correlated with the targets’ actual depressive symptoms. Thus, individuals may be able to infer aspects of mental disorder from minimal facial cues.     

Rapid Emotional Contagion and Expressive Congruence Under Strong Test Conditions

The present research examined whether the observation of emotional expressions rapidly induces congruent emotional experiences and facial responses in observers under strong test conditions. Specifically, participants rated their emotional reactions after (a) single, brief exposures of (b) a range of human emotional facial expressions that included (c) a neutral face comparison using a procedure designed to (d) minimize potential experimental demand. Even with these strong test conditions in place, participants reported discrete expression-congruent changes in emotional experience. Participants’ Corrugator supercilii facial muscle activity immediately following the presentation of an emotional expression appeared to reflect expressive congruence with the observed expression and a response indicative of the amount of cognitive load necessary to interpret the observed expression. The complexity of the C. supercilii response suggests caution in using facial muscle activity as a nonverbal measure of emotional contagion.

The Effects of Social Interaction and Personal Relationships on Facial Expressions

Previous studies have reported that the expression of smiles is facilitated by social interaction between partners. We examined the effects of social interaction and personal relationships on facial expressions in Japan. Pairs of friends and strangers seated next to each other (the no partition condition) or separated by a partition (the partition condition) were shown film clips aimed to elicit either positive or negative affect. Smiles were facilitated in the no partition condition in which participants interacted with each other. Further, the effect of social interaction on frowns differed depending on whether pairs were friends or strangers.     

Cry Babies and Pollyannas: Infants Can Detect Unjustified Emotional Reactions

Infants are attuned to emotional facial and vocal expressions, reacting most prominently when they are exposed to negative expressions. However, it remains unknown if infants can detect whether a person's emotions are justifiable given a particular context. The focus of the current paper was to examine whether infants react the same way to unjustified (e.g., distress following a positive experience) and justified (e.g., distress following a negative experience) emotional reactions. Infants aged 15 and 18 months were shown an actor experiencing negative and positive experiences, with one group exposed to an actor whose emotional reactions were consistently unjustified (i.e., did not match the event), while the other saw an actor whose emotional reactions were justified (i.e., always matched the event). Infants' looking times and empathic reactions were examined. Only 18‐month‐olds detected the mismatching facial expressions: Those in the unjustified group showed more hypothesis testing (i.e., checking) across events than the justified group. Older infants in the justified group also showed more concerned reactions to negative expressions than those in the unjustified group. The present findings indicate that infants implicitly understand how the emotional valence of experiences is linked to subsequent emotional expressions.     

Detecting Happiness: Perceiver Sensitivity to Enjoyment and Non-Enjoyment Smiles

The physiognomic distinctions between spontaneous enjoyment smiles and deliberate non-enjoyment smiles provide the social perceiver with a functional, accessible source of information to help regulate social interaction. Two experiments were performed to investigate whether perceivers were sensitive to this information in a contextually meaningful manner. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge whether a target individual was happy or not. The results revealed that participants were indeed sensitive to the differences between enjoyment and non-enjoyment smiles. In Experiment 2, participants performed a priming task without any specific instruction to judge emotional state. Neutral expressions, non-enjoyment smiles and enjoyment smiles were employed as primes in a word valence identification task. The results demonstrated a clear trend indicative of perceiver sensitivity. When compared to a the baseline condition of a neutral expression prime, enjoyment but not non-enjoyment smiles facilitated identification of positive words.

Attachment Themes in the Family Narratives of Preschool Children: A Qualitative Analysis

The family narratives of two preschool children (male and female) rated extremely high in social competence were compared to the narratives of two other children (also male and female) rated extremely low in social competence for differences in qualities of parent-child relationships and narrative structure. The children were participants in a larger study of parent-child relationships in post-divorce families. Three narratives of the ten-narrative Attachment Story Completion Task-Revised were analyzed qualitatively. Differences between children rated high and low in social competence were observed in areas such as the representation of problem resolutions, narrative coherence, predictable consequences for behavior, role modeling, responsiveness of parents to children's needs, emotional expression, children's ambivalence for caregivers, and family integrity. Implications for further research involving representations of attachment security in narrative play are discussed.     

Subjective Recognition of Emotional Expressions in Face Transplant Patients

One of the most prevalent problems in face transplant patients is an inability to generate facial expression of emotions. The purpose of this study was to measure the subjective recognition of patients’ emotional expressions by other people. We examined facial expression of six emotions in two facial transplant patients (patient A = partial, patient B = full) and one healthy control using video clips to evoke emotions. We recorded target subjects’ facial expressions with a video camera while they were watching the clips. These were then shown to a panel of 130 viewers and rated in terms of degree of emotional expressiveness on a 7-point Likert scale. The scores for emotional expressiveness were higher for the healthy control than they were for patients A and B, and these varied as a function of emotion. The most recognizable emotion was happiness. The least recognizable emotions in Patient A were fear, surprise, and anger. The expressions of Patient B scored lower than those of Patient A and the healthy control. The findings show that partial and full-face transplant patients may have difficulties in generating facial expression of emotions even if they can feel those emotions, and different parts of the face seem to play critical roles in different emotional expressions.     

The Effects of the Facial Expression of Beneficiaries in Charity Appeals and Psychological Involvement on Donation Intentions

To increase the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns, many human‐need charities include pictures of beneficiaries in their ads. However, it is unclear when and why the facial expression of these beneficiaries (sad versus happy) may influence the effectiveness of charity ads. To answer these questions, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of the facial expression on donation intentions, while considering the moderating role of psychological involvement with charities. It found that psychological involvement with charities moderated the impact of the facial expression on donation intentions in that seeing a picture of a sad versus happy person increased intentions to give among participants with lower levels of psychological involvement, whereas the reverse was true for highly involved participants. The moderating effect of psychological involvement was fully explained by the perceived efficacy of one's donation. The findings not only contribute to our understanding of the effect of the facial expression of people pictured in charity appeals on donation behavior, but also suggest that nonprofits should tailor their ads to target potential donors with various levels of psychological involvement with charities.     

Putting empathic feelings into words during times of crisis: The impact of differential verbal empathy expressions on organizational reputation

Organizations in crisis should, above all, demonstrate compassion, concern, and empathy to relieve psychological distress among their stakeholders. In addition, a display of empathy can mitigate reputational damage as well. But how can an organization in crisis put expressions of empathy into words? This study examines three distinct manners to verbally express empathy (i.e., claiming vs. demonstrating understanding; cognitive vs. affective empathy; intensified vs. unintensified verbal expression of empathy) and explores their impact on the post-crisis reputation through three experimental studies. The first two studies also examine the crisis type as a potential boundary condition. The results confirm that an expression of empathy can help protect an organization’s reputation, during both a victim crisis and a preventable crisis. When an organization expresses empathy for those who suffer from a crisis, the public may in turn experience empathic concern towards the organization, which helps to alleviate reputational damage. The positive effect of empathy expressions differs, however, depending on the way in which it is verbally articulated.