Research in social cognition has shown that our own emotional experiences are an important source of information to understand what other people are feeling. The current study investigated whether individuals project their own affective states when reading other's emotional expressions. We used brief autobiographical recall and audiovisual stimuli to induce happy, neutral and sad transient states. After each emotion induction, participants made emotion judgments about ambiguous faces displaying a mixture of happiness and sadness. Using an adaptive psychophysics procedure, we estimated the tendency to perceive the faces as happy under each of the induced affective states. Results demonstrate the occurrence of egocentric projections, such that faces were more likely judged as happy when participants reported being happy as compared to when they were sad. Moreover, the degree of emotional egocentricity was associated with individual differences in perspective-taking, with smaller biases being observed in individuals with higher disposition to take the perspective of others. Our findings extend previous literature on emotional egocentricity by showing that self-projection occurs when we make emotion attributions based on the other's emotional expressions, and supports the notion that perspective-taking tendencies play a role in the ability to understand the other's affective states.

Cortical motor simulation supports the understanding of others' actions and intentions. This mechanism is thought to rely on the mirror neuron system (MNS), a brain network that is active both during action execution and observation. Indirect evidence suggests that (alpha/beta) mu suppression, an electroencephalographic (EEG) index of MNS activity, is modulated by reward. In this study we aimed to test the plasticity of the MNS by directly investigating the link between (alpha/beta) mu suppression and reward. 40 individuals from a general population sample took part in an evaluative conditioning experiment, where different neutral faces were associated with high or low reward values. In the test phase, EEG was recorded while participants viewed videoclips of happy expressions made by the conditioned faces. Alpha/beta mu suppression (identified using event-related desynchronisation of specific independent components) in response to rewarding faces was found to be greater than for non-rewarding faces. This result provides a mechanistic insight into the plasticity of the MNS and, more generally, into the role of reward in modulating physiological responses linked to empathy.

These results suggest that a biologically informed genetic profile score can capture the genetic disposition to HPA axis reactivity and moderates the influence of early environmental factors on facial emotion recognition. Further research should investigate the neural mechanisms underlying this moderation. The GPS used here might prove a powerful tool for studying inter-individual differences in vulnerability to early life stress.

Establishing direct gaze has been shown to enhance the tendency to automatically imitate the other person’s actions, an effect that seems to be reduced in autism. Most previous studies, however, used experimental tasks that may have confounded the measurement of automatic imitation with spatial compatibility effects. This calls into question whether gaze cues regulate automatic imitation, or instead affect domain-general processes of response inhibition. Using a task that disentangled imitative from spatial compatibility effects, the current study re-examined the role of autistic traits on the modulation of automatic imitation by direct and averted gaze cues. While our results do not provide evidence for an overall significant influence of gaze on neither automatic imitation nor spatial compatibility, autistic traits were predictive of a reduced inhibition of imitative behaviour following averted gaze. Nonetheless, exploratory analyses suggested that the observed modulation by autistic traits may actually be better explained by the effects of concomitant social anxiety symptoms. In addition, the ethnicity of the imitated agent was identified as another potential modulator of the gaze effects on automatic imitation. Overall, our findings highlight the contextual nature of automatic imitation, but call for a reconsideration of the role of gaze on imitative behaviour.

Research has shown that people rely more strongly on self-knowledge when making inferences about the attitudes and beliefs of individuals they perceive similar to themselves, compared to dissimilar others. The current study investigated whether similarity also influences the extent to which individuals project their own affective states during emotion inferences. In a within-subject experiment, the perceived similarity between the participants and a series of target faces was manipulated using a minimal group paradigm. To measure affective self-projections, participants made quick judgments about ambiguous emotional facial expressions of similar and dissimilar targets after being induced positive and negative affective states. Confirming the occurrence of emotional egocentricity, the own affective states biased the emotion attributions, such that facial expressions were judged as happier after positive induction than after negative induction. However, against our hypothesis, the degree of emotional egocentricity did not differ for similar and dissimilar targets. Our results suggest that, contrarily to more evaluative forms of mental state attribution, the tendency to project the own affective states during lower-level processes of emotion inferences is not dependent on the perceived similarity with the other.

Recent findings suggest a role of oxytocin on the tendency to spontaneously mimic the emotional facial expressions of others. Oxytocin-related increases of facial mimicry, however, seem to be dependent on contextual factors. Given previous literature showing that people preferentially mimic emotional expressions of individuals associated with high (vs. low) rewards, we examined whether the reward value of the mimicked agent is one factor influencing the oxytocin effects on facial mimicry. To test this hypothesis, 60 male adults received 24 IU of either intranasal oxytocin or placebo in a double-blind, between-subject experiment. Next, the value of male neutral faces was manipulated using an associative learning task with monetary rewards. After the reward associations were learned, participants watched videos of the same faces displaying happy and angry expressions. Facial reactions to the emotional expressions were measured with electromyography. We found that participants judged as more pleasant the face identities associated with high reward values than with low reward values. However, happy expressions by low rewarding faces were more spontaneously mimicked than high rewarding faces. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find a significant direct effect of intranasal oxytocin on facial mimicry, nor on the reward-driven modulation of mimicry. Our results support the notion that mimicry is a complex process that depends on contextual factors, but failed to provide conclusive evidence of a role of oxytocin on the modulation of facial mimicry.

Establishing direct gaze has been shown to enhance the tendency to automatically imitate the other person’s actions, an effect that seems to be reduced in autism. Most previous studies, however, used experimental tasks that may have confounded the measurement of automatic imitation with spatial compatibility effects. This calls into question whether gaze cues regulate automatic imitation, or instead affect domain-general processes of response inhibition. Using a task that disentangled imitative from spatial compatibility effects, the current preregistered study re-examined the role of autistic traits on the modulation of automatic imitation by direct and averted gaze cues. Our results do not provide evidence for an overall significant effect of gaze on neither automatic imitation nor spatial compatibility. Nevertheless, autistic traits in our sub-clinical sample were predictive of a reduced inhibition of imitative behaviour following averted gaze, in line with previous observations in autism. Exploratory analyses further revealed that social anxiety and the ethnicity of the imitated agent should be considered as potential modulators of the gaze effects on automatic imitation in future research. Overall, our findings call for a reconsideration of the gaze effects on imitative behaviour and highlight the contextual nature of automatic imitation.

When inferring the mental states of others, individuals’ judgments are influenced by their own state of mind, an effect often referred to as egocentricity. Self–other differentiation is key for an accurate interpretation of other’s mental states, especially when these differ from one’s own states. It has been suggested that the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) is causally involved in overcoming egocentricity in the affective domain. In a double-blind randomized study, 47 healthy adults received anodal (1 mA, 20 min) or sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the rSMG prior to performing a newly developed paradigm, the self–other facial emotion judgment (SOFE) task. In this task, participants made judgments of facial emotional expressions while having been previously confronted with congruent or incongruent emotion-inducing situations. To differentiate between emotional and cognitive egocentricity, participants additionally completed an established visual perspective-taking task. Our results confirmed the occurrence of emotional egocentric biases during the SOFE task. No conclusive evidence of a general role of the rSMG in emotional egocentricity was found. However, active as compared to sham tDCS induced descriptively lower egocentric biases when judging incongruent fearful faces, and stronger biases when judging incongruent happy faces, suggesting emotion-specific tDCS effects on egocentric biases. Further, we found significant tDCS effects on cognitive egocentricity. Results of the present study expanded our understanding of emotional egocentricity and point towards emotion-specific patterns of the underlying functionality.