The Perception and Mimicry of Facial Movements Predict Judgments of Smile Authenticity

Abstract

The mechanisms through which people perceive different types of smiles and judge their authenticity remain unclear. Here, 19 different types of smiles were created based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), using highly controlled, dynamic avatar faces. Participants observed short videos of smiles while their facial mimicry was measured with electromyography (EMG) over four facial muscles. Smile authenticity was judged after each trial. Avatar attractiveness was judged once in response to each avatar’s neutral face. Results suggest that, in contrast to most earlier work using static pictures as stimuli, participants relied less on the Duchenne marker (the presence of crow’s feet wrinkles around the eyes) in their judgments of authenticity. Furthermore, mimicry of smiles occurred in the Zygomaticus Major, Orbicularis Oculi, and Corrugator muscles. Consistent with theories of embodied cognition, activity in these muscles predicted authenticity judgments, suggesting that facial mimicry influences the perception of smiles. However, no significant mediation effect of facial mimicry was found. Avatar attractiveness did not predict authenticity judgments or mimicry patterns.

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: A review and new hypotheses

“…This is subtended by somatosensory‐related cortices and could be linked to facial mimicry, the tendency to replicate others' facial expressions 128, 129. Hence, in HCs, facial electromyography (EMG) could highlight congruent facial muscle responses to facial expressions, which could foster emotion recognition 130, 131, 132. However, one of the most frequent and distinctive Parkinsonian motor symptoms is hypomimia 1.…”

Gender differences in the neural network of facial mimicry of smiles – An rTMS study

“…Since facial mimicry can influence the processing of and judgments about emotional facial expressions (Korb et al, 2014;Niedenthal et al, 2001;Rychlowska et al, 2014), inhibition of M1 was also expected to be associated with lower ratings of perceived happiness in happy faces of the Intensity task, and delayed perception of happiness in Angry-To-Happy videos in the Offset task. This hypothesis was partially confirmed, and results differed by gender.…”

“…The observer's own smile is hypothesized to facilitate the recognition of the observed expression through afferent feedback to the brain. Indeed, mimicry of happy faces increases the accuracy of judgments of smile authenticity (Korb, With, Niedenthal, Kaiser, & Grandjean, 2014; but see Hess & Blairy, 2001), and the blocking of facial mimicry reduces the speed and the accuracy of recognizing emotional facial expressions. For example, blocking facial mimicry slows the recognition of positive and negative facial expressions (Stel & van Knippenberg, 2008), impairs the distinction between true and false smiles (Maringer, Krumhuber, Fischer, & Niedenthal, 2011;Rychlowska et al, 2014), delays the perception of the offset of happy and sad facial expressions (Niedenthal, Brauer, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 2001), and interferes with the recognition of happiness (Oberman, Winkielman, & Ramachandran, 2007).…”

Early event-related potentials to emotional faces differ for adults with autism spectrum disorder and by serotonin transporter genotype

“…Additionally, open-mouthed faces enhance visual search (Horstmann et al, 2012), suggesting that teeth provide a salient perceptual cue. Varying degrees of teeth and gums are revealed in different facial expressions (Walter et al, 2014) and are linked to the naturalness of expressions (Korb et al, 2014; Van Der Geld et al, 2008), thus the appearance of teeth may be confounded with certain expressions. As well, critical information used to discriminate emotion varies by expression with more information about happiness conveyed by the mouth and more information about fear conveyed by the eyes as reflected in the scanning patterns of neurotypical adults (Eisenbarth and Alpers, 2011).…”