International Journal of Psychophysiology 40Ž. 2001 129᎐141 Facial mimicry and emotional contagion to dynamic emotional facial expressions and their in¯uence on decoding accuracy Ursula Hessa,U, Sylvie Blairy b aDepartment of Psychology, Uni¨ersity of Quebec at Montreal, P.O. Box 8888, Station Centre-Ville, Montreal, QC, Canada H3C 3P8 bFree Uni¨ersity of Brussels, ERASME Hospital, Brussels, Belgium Received 27 June 2000; received in revised form 26 July 2000; accepted 1 August 2000 Abstract The present study had the goal to assess whether individuals mimic and show emotional contagion in response to relatively weak and idiosyncratic dynamic facial expressions of emotions similar to those encountered in everyday life. Furthermore, the question of whether mimicry leads to emotional contagion and in turn facilitates emotion recognition was addressed. Forty-one female participants rated a series of short video clips of stimulus persons expressing anger, sadness, disgust, and happiness regarding the emotions expressed. An unobtrusive measure of emotional contagion was taken. Evidence for mimicry was found for all types of expressions. Furthermore, evidence for emotional contagion of happiness and sadness was found. Mediational analyses could not con®rm any relation between mimicry and emotional contagion nor between mimicry and emotion recognition. ᮊ 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Facial mimicry; Emotional contagion; Emotion recognition 1. Introduction munication of affective statesw e.g. Freud, 1921, based on a theory by Lipps, 1907; Bavelas et al., It has been suggested that mimicry ᎏ the 1986x . For example, RogersŽ. 1957 saw the imita- imitation of others' non-verbal displays by an tion of a client's non-verbal behavior as a means observer ᎏ plays an important role in the com- to communicate empathy and some schools of therapyŽ. see, e.g. Siegel, 1995 advocate imitation as a means of understanding the client's internal U Corresponding author. state. E-mail address: [email protected]Ž. U. Hess . Facial mimicry in this context is usually concep- 0167-8760r01r$ - see front matter ᮊ 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 8 7 6 0Ž. 0 0 00161-6 130 U. Hess, S. Blairy rInternational Journal of Psychophysiology 40() 2001 129᎐141 tualized as an automatic, re¯ex-like processŽ see, al.Ž. 1993 . Similarly, Cappella Ž. 1993 , based on e.g. Lipps, 1907; Hoffmann, 1984; Hat®eld et al., evidence in favor of the facial feedback hypothe- 1993. , with the observer's facial expression match- sisŽ. FFH in particular, proposes that facial feed- ing the observed facial expression. Emotional back from mimicry causes contagion. contagion is a closely related concept that is However, evidence is accumulating that emo- sometimes de®ned in overlapping termsŽ e.g. Hat- tional contagion may not be causally related to ®eld et al., 1993. It is therefore useful to de®ne mimicryŽ Gump and Kulik, 1996; Blairy et al., the speci®c use of the two terms in the framework 1999. Also, in their review of the literature, Hess of the present study. Speci®cally, we consider as et al.Ž. 1999 could not ®nd any consistent evi- mimicry the congruent facial reactions to the dence that mimicry facilitates emotion recogni- emotional facial displays of others. That is, tion. Together, these ®ndings throw doubt on the mimicry is de®ned exclusively as an expressive notion that emotion recognition is related to a component. In contrast, we de®ne emotional con- re¯ex-like mimicry process via contagion. tagion as an affective state that matches the So why do people mimic at all since this process other's emotional display. seems to not be related to either emotional con- In a recent review, Hess et al.Ž. 1999 conclude tagion or emotion recognition accuracy? Before that evidence from studies on both adults and answering this question a second look at the infants strongly suggests that, in general, people evidence reported above is necessary. First, de- adopt facial, postural, and vocal behaviors that spite the evidence for facial mimicry reported are congruent with the displays they observe, and above, it is not clear whether individuals mimic that these displays often represent mimicryŽ see the type of expressions they are likely to en- also Dimberg, 1990. However, some examples of counter in real life. This, because evidence for counter-mimicry effectsŽ e.g. Lanzetta and Englis, mimicry in adults is largely based on studies that 1989; Hess, 1998. have also been reported. Speci- employed very intense, prototypical facial expres- ®cally, Lanzetta and EnglisŽ. 1989 found mimicry sions presented as still photographs. For example, in a collaborative task situation but counter- the extensive studies on mimicry and contagion in mimicry in a competitive task situation. This, and adults by Dimberg and LundqvistŽ e.g. Dimberg, evidence that mimicry may depend on the type of 1990; Lundqvist, 1995; Lundqvist and Dimberg, task the participant is engaged inŽ Hess et al., 1995. employed stimuli selected from the `Pic- 1998. , suggests that mimicry may not be an auto- tures of facial affect'Ž. Ekman and Friesen, 1976 , matic, re¯ex-like mechanism. Furthermore, a which are a set of highly recognizable and proto- number of studies suggest that individuals tend to typic facial expressions. Such stimuli may in fact report emotional states that match the facial elicit a re¯ex-like response due to their extremity emotion displays to which they have been exposed that is not found for less extreme expressions. Žsee, e.g. Hat®eld et al., 1993; Strayer, 1993; Laird This notion is supported by the observation that et al., 1994; Schneider et al., 1994; Lundqvist and studies ®nding evidence for the situation depen- Dimberg, 1995. dence of mimicry employed somewhat weaker The two processes, mimicry and emotional con- and more natural expressionsŽ Lanzetta and En- tagion, have been suggested to be causally elated. glis, 1989; Gump and Kulik, 1996; Hess et al., This idea goes back to LippsŽ. 1907 who sug- 1998.Ž. Also, McHugo et al. 1991 and Bourgeois gested that the imitated expression leads ᎏ via a and HessŽ. 1999 using video exert of news pro- feedback process ᎏ to emotional contagion. As grams featuring politicians found that mimicry regards the in¯uence of emotional contagion on was modulated by the political attitude of the empathyŽ the capacity to recognize the emotional observer. That is, observers were more likely to state of others.Ž. , Lipps 1907 as well as Hoffmann mimicry a politician if they shared his political Ž.1984 imply that emotional contagion should in beliefs than when not. turn facilitate emotion recognition. Related ideas In sum, studies ®nding clear evidence for facial have more recently been expressed by Hat®eld et mimicry and emotional contagion tend to employ U. Hess, S. Blairy rInternational Journal of Psychophysiology 40() 2001 129᎐141 131 prototypical, high intensity, still photographs as Speci®cally, participants were asked to decode stimulus material, whereas those studies that a series of video clips of emotional expressions of found evidence of situational in¯uences on happiness, anger, sadness, and disgust. These fa- mimicry employed more naturalistic, less proto- cial expressions were recorded during an emotio- typical or weaker, facial stimuli. Thus, the ques- nal imagery task and represent the spontaneous, tion of whether individuals mimic the type of idiosyncratic expressions of the expressor. Partici- expressions they are likely to encounter in every- pants' own facial expressions were measured us- day life deserves further investigation. ing facial electromyography and their emotional As regards the lack of evidence for the facilita- state was assessed using an unobtrusive self- tion of emotion recognition by mimicry, it is report measure. Mediational analysesŽ Baron and possible that the use of prototypical stimulus ma- Kenny, 1986. were used to assess the in¯uence of terial may not suf®ce to uncover subtle improve- mimicry on emotional contagion and on emotion ments in decoding accuracy due to mimicry. recognition. Speci®cally, the process described by LippsŽ. 1907 is relatively elaborate and demands both a certain empathic ability and introspection. Yet, emotion 2. Method displays can be decoded by using other sources of information. The sender's emotion displays, the 2.1. Participants facial, vocal, postural, etc., expressions emitted by the sender can be used to draw inferences regard- Forty-one female volunteers with a mean age ing the presumed emotional state of the sender of 24.3 yearsŽ. S.D.s8.6 from the University of using a pattern-matching approachŽ e.g. Buck, Quebec at Montreal participated individually. 1984. For example, the presence of upturned Participants were recruited on campus and via corners of the mouth and of wrinkles around the announcements in classrooms. Facial EMG data eyes can be interpreted as signaling happiness for some episodes had to be deleted for two whereas eyebrows drawn together in a frown may participants due to movement artifacts. signal anger. This process should be especially useful for the decoding of the prototypical, highly 2.2. Dependent measures recognizable expressions often used in studies on mimicry and contagion. In those circumstances, 2.2.1. Facial EMG the additional information provided by the process Facial EMG was measured on the left side of described by Lipps may not in fact add to the the face. Electrode placements were chosen ac- already high level of decoding accuracy. cording to Fridlund and CacioppoŽ. 1986 . Activity Thus, facial mimicry may be expected to have a of the Orbicularis oculi, and Zygomaticus major facilitative effect on emotion recognition mainly was employed to assess smiling, activity of the in situations where the emotion displays are rela- Corrugator supercilii Ž.eyebrow was employed to tively weak and non-prototypical and where the assess frowning, and activity of the Le¨ator labii participants do not know the sender and have no alesque nasii was employed to assess the `sneer' previous attitude towards the sender.