Processes underlying congruent and incongruent facial reactions to emotional facial expressions.

Abstract

The present electromyographic study is a first step toward shedding light on the involvement of affective processes in congruent and incongruent facial reactions to facial expressions. Further, empathy was investigated as a potential mediator underlying the modulation of facial reactions to emotional faces in a competitive, a cooperative, and a neutral setting. Results revealed less congruent reactions to happy expressions and even incongruent reactions to sad and angry expressions in the competition condition, whereas virtually no differences between the neutral and the cooperation condition occurred. Effects on congruent reactions were found to be mediated by cognitive empathy, indicating that the state of empathy plays an important role in the situational modulation of congruent reactions. Further, incongruent reactions to sad and angry faces in a competition setting were mediated by the emotional reaction of joy, supporting the assumption that incongruent facial reactions are mainly based on affective processes. Additionally, strategic processes (specifically, the goal to create and maintain a smooth, harmonious interaction) were found to influence facial reactions while being in a cooperative mindset. Now, further studies are needed to test for the generalizability of these effects.

Discrepancies Between Parent and Adolescent Beliefs About Daily Life Topics and Performance on an Emotion Recognition Task

“…In support of previous theoretical work, the present study yielded evidence for candidate informant characteristics (i.e., parent and adolescent abilities to understand and interpret the emotions and thoughts of other people) that can feasibly be implemented in future longitudinal research seeking to test conceptual models of the links between parent-child reporting discrepancies and child psychopathology outcomes. Indeed, recent work suggests that emotion recognition mediates the relationship between a social situation and the appropriate display of emotion in that situation (Likowski et al, 2011). Such displays are likely crucial to achieving consonant understanding between parents and children on important aspects of the parent-child relationship.…”

“…The RMET is a widely used performance-based measure designed to assess individual differences in general understanding of others’ perspectives, yet has demonstrated its clearest, most precise construct validity as a measure of emotion recognition (see Hefter, Manoach, & Barton, 2005; Likowski et al, 2011). We assessed emotion recognition using the RMET, in light of work indicating its utility in assessing this construct in both clinic and community based settings and various developmental periods.…”

“…One such characteristic may be expressions of poor emotion recognition among parents and children, or their abilities to identify the emotions of others (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). Lower levels of emotion recognition relate to higher levels of difficulties with social interactions (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001), and mediate the capacity to display situation-appropriate facial expressions (Likowski, Mühlberger, Seibt, Pauli, & Weyers, 2011). In fact, among patients demonstrating normative levels of intelligence, greater self-reported symptoms of autism relate to decreased emotion recognition (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al, 2001).…”

Social top-down response modulation (STORM): a model of the control of mimicry in social interaction

“…People increase mimicry toward those who are important for their social welfare. For example, participants show stronger mimicry to targets who are human but not robots (Longo and Bertenthal, 2009; Liepelt and Brass, 2010), who are attractive and nice (Likowski et al, 2008; van Leeuwen et al, 2009; Stel et al, 2010), who are powerful and have high social status (Cheng and Chartrand, 2003; Mastrop et al, in preparation), and who are friends and in-group members (Yabar et al, 2006; Bourgeois and Hess, 2008). People also increase mimicry when their social relationship is endangered.…”

More than a face: a unified theoretical perspective on nonverbal social cue processing in social anxiety

“…Importantly, mimicry depends on an interaction’s nature; competitive interactions seem to elicit less facial mimicry than collaborative interactions (Likowski et al, 2011). Lower mimicry in competitive situations may be conceptualized as complementary behavior, where dominant displays (e.g., anger) elicit submissive reactions (e.g., fear).…”