Person A and B not only mimic each other’s facial expression, they also link on the physiological level and without being aware of it, synchronize on the level of arousal. This interchange of emotion processing influences impressions that are formed during a social interaction.įigure 1 shows how emotions that are expressed during a social interaction by Person A, through emotional contagion, influence the emotions and expressions of Person B. By attending to the stream of subtle dynamic facial reactions during an interaction, they “feel themselves into” the emotional landscapes inhabited by their partners they rely on, and are influenced by implicit signals from their partner’s face that are autonomic and not under someone’s control, yet reflective of his or her emotions and intentions ( Hatfield et al., 1994). They orient to their partner’s tractable characteristics, such as facial or bodily features and emotion expressions. Given the impact of our emotions on a wide range of mental processes (e.g., perception, impression formation, decision making, memory) and manifest behaviors (e.g., helping or aggressive and abusive behavior), being able to recognize and regulate our emotions is of crucial importance and an essential feature of mental health ( Kret and Ploeger, 2015).ĭuring social interaction, interaction partners continuously express and regulate emotional states and simultaneously process affective cues expressed by the other. In this review I will focus on the visual domain and on the face alone (columns E and F in Table 1) and explain how humans use a variety of sources from others’ facial signals during natural interactions.Įmotion processing is a broad and general term that refers to a complex of affective, behavioral and cognitive mechanisms that underlie our emotions. Table 1 gives an overview of the various cues available in different communication mediums. Making eye-contact over Skype would require both interaction partners to look into the camera (and miss out upon each other’s eyes). One key limitation of Skype is that it is impossible to make eye-contact. However, even a Skype-conversation which from all communication media best simulates a natural interaction, does not even approach the richness and quality of real face-to-face interactions. Modern communication media aim for making conversations as natural as possible. Often, we are not aware of being influenced by these signals, except when they are absent from a “conversation,” for example during email or phone (mis)communication. Imagine how different life would be if we were unable to recognize another’s expressions and from that, infer or even feel how the other must be feeling? During interactions with others, we automatically make use of another’s facial expressions and bodily signals and use that information to contextualize what is being said. I will here review this literature and suggest avenues for future research that will eventually lead to a better comprehension of how these signals help in making social judgments and understand each other’s emotions. Recently, more research is emerging about the mimicry of these subtle affective signals including pupil-mimicry. Specifically, I will focus on the perception of implicit sources such as gaze and tears and autonomic responses such as pupil-dilation, eyeblinks and blushing that are subtle yet visible to observers and because they can hardly be controlled or regulated by the sender, provide important “veridical” information. In this article, I therefore argue for a broader exploration of emotion signals from sources beyond the face muscles that are more automatic and difficult to control. However, the fact that emotions are not just expressed by facial muscles alone is often still ignored in emotion perception research. The majority of research has focused on facial actions as expressions of emotion. When people unconsciously mimic their interaction partner’s expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of those companions’ emotions, which in turn influence the observer’s own emotional and empathic behavior. Different theories propose that mimicry of emotional expressions (facial or otherwise) mechanistically underlies, or at least facilitates, these swift adaptive reactions. Humans are well adapted to quickly recognize and adequately respond to another’s emotions. 2Amsterdam Brain and Cognition Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands.1Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
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