Emotional mimicry—quick and spontaneous matching of another’s expressions—is a well-documented phenomenon that is associated with numerous social outcomes. Although the mechanisms underlying mimicry are not fully understood, there is growing awareness that it is more than a one-to-one motor matching of others’ expressions and may be the result of neural simulation. If true, it is possible that mimicry could extend to other parts of the body, even in the absence of visual information from that body part. Indeed, we found that passively viewing anger and fear expressions, without accompanying information from the body, voice or other channels, produced both facial mimicry and corresponding responses in arm muscles that make a fist or a defensive posture. This suggests that observers simulated observed expressions and that activity may have spilled over to other areas to create a body response.
AchaibouA.PourtoisG.SchwartzS.VuilleumierP. (2008). Simultaneous recording of EEG and facial muscle reactions during spontaneous emotional mimicry. Neuropsychologia, 46, 1104–1113. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.10.019
2.
American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. American Psychologist, 57, 1060–1073.
3.
Ashton-JamesC. E.LevordashkaA. (2013). When the wolf wears sheep’s clothing individual differences in the desire to be liked influence nonconscious behavioral mimicry. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 643–648.
4.
BeallP.MoodyE. J.McIntoshD. N.HepburnS. L.ReedC. L. (2008). Rapid facial reactions to emotional facial expressions in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 101, 206–223.
5.
BergerS. M.HadleyS. W. (1975). Some effects of a model’s performance on an observer’s electromyographic activity. American Journal of Psychology, 88, 263–276.
6.
CacioppoJ. T.PettyR. E.LoschM. E.KimH. S. (1986). Electromyographic activity over facial muscle regions can differentiate the valence and intensity of affective reactions. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 50, 260–268.
7.
ChartrandT. L.BarghJ. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 893–910.
8.
DarwinC. (1998). The expression of the emotions in man and animals (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (Original work published1872)
9.
DimbergU. (1982). Facial reactions to facial expressions. Pscyhophysiology, 19, 643–647.
10.
DimbergU. (1986). Facial reactions to fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. Biological Psychology, 23, 153–161.
11.
DimbergU.HanssonG.ThunbergM. (1998). Fear of snakes and facial reactions: A case of rapid emotional responding. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 39, 75–80.
12.
DimbergU.PettersonM. (2000). Facial reactions to happy and angry facial expressions: Evidence for right hemisphere dominance. Psychophysiology, 37, 693–696.
Frois-WittmanJ. (1930). The judgment of facial expression. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 13, 113–151.
15.
HappéF. G. (1997). Central coherence and theory of mind in autism: Reading homographs in context. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 1–12.
16.
HappéF.FrithU. (2006). The weak coherence account: Detail-focused cognitive style in Autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 5–25. doi:10.1007/s10803-005-0039-0
17.
HatfieldE.CacioppoJ.RapsonR. (1993). Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2, 96–99.
18.
HawkS. T.FischerA. H. (2016). More than just a mirror: Examining the cross-channel mimicry of emotional expression In HessU.FischerA. H. (Eds.), Emotional mimicry in social context (pp. 107–124). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
19.
HawkS. T.FischerA. H.Van KleefG. A. (2012). Face the noise: Embodied responses to nonverbal vocalizations of discrete emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 796–814. doi:10.1037/a0026234
20.
HessU.FischerA. (2013). Emotional mimicry as social regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 142–157. doi:10.1177/1088868312472607
21.
HessU.FischerA. (2014). Emotional mimicry: Why and when we mimic emotions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 45–57.
KuleszaW.DolinskiD.HuismanA.MajewskiR. (2013). The echo effect: The power of verbal mimicry to influence prosocial behavior. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. doi:10.1177/0261927X13506906
24.
LakensD. (2013). Calculating and reporting effect sizes to facilitate cumulative science: A practical primer for t-tests and ANOVAs. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi:ARTN86310.3389/fpsyg.2013.00863
25.
LevensonR. W. (1992). Autonomic nervous system differences among emotions. Psychological Science, 3, 23–27.
26.
MagneeM. J.StekelenburgJ. J.KemnerC.de GelderB. (2007). Similar facial electromyographic responses to faces, voices, and body expressions. Neuroreport, 18, 369–372. doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e32801776e6
27.
McDonaldS.LiS.De SousaA.RushbyJ.DimoskaA.JamesC.TateR.L. (2011). Impaired mimicry response to angry faces following severe traumatic brain injury. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 33, 17–29. doi:10.1080/13803391003761967
28.
McIntoshD. N. (1996). Facial feedback hypotheses: Evidence, implications, and directions. Motivation and Emotion, 20, 121–147.
29.
McIntoshD. N.Reichmann-DeckerA.WinkielmanP.WilbargerJ. L. (2006). When the social mirror breaks: Deficits in automatic, but not voluntary mimicry of emotional facial expressions in autism. Developmental Science, 9, 295–302.
30.
MoodyE. J.McIntoshD. N. (2006). Mimicry and autism: Bases and consequences of rapid, automatic matching behavior. In RogersS.WilliamsJ. (Eds.), Imitation and the social mind: Autism and typical development (pp. 71–95). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
31.
MoodyE. J.McIntoshD. N. (2011). Mimicry of dynamic emotional and motor-only stimuli. Social Psychological and Personality Science. doi:10.1177/1948550611406741
32.
MoodyE. J.McIntoshD. N.MannL. J.WeisserK. R. (2007). More than mere mimicry? The influence of emotion on rapid facial reactions to faces. Emotion, 7, 447–457.
33.
NealD. T.ChartrandT. L. (2011). Embodied emotion perception amplifying and dampening facial feedback modulates emotion perception accuracy. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 673–678.
34.
NiedenthalP. M. (2007). Embodying emotion. Science, 316, 1002–1005. doi:10.1126/science.1136930
35.
NiedenthalP. M.BarsalouL. W.RicF.Krauth-GruberS. (2007). Embodiment in the acquisition and use of emotion knowledge. In BarrettL. F.NiedenthalP. M.WinkielmanP. (Eds.), Emotion and consciousness (pp. 21–50). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
36.
NiedenthalP. M.BrauerM.HalberstadtJ. B.Innes-KerA. H. (2001). When did her smile drop? Facial mimicry and the influences of emotional state on the detection of change in emotional expression. Cognition & Emotion, 15, 853–864.
37.
ObermanL. M.WinkielmanP.RamachandranV. S. (2009). Slow echo: Facial EMG evidence for the delay of spontaneous, but not voluntary, emotional mimicry in children with autism spectrum disorders. Developmental Science, 12, 510–520.
38.
OlejnikS.AlginaJ. (2003). Generalized eta and omega squared statistics: Measures of effect size for some common research designs. Psychological Methods, 8, 434–447. doi:10.1037/1082-989x.8.4.434
39.
PrestonS. D.de WaalF. B. (2002). Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 1–20; discussion20–71.
40.
SmithC. A. (1989). Dimensions of appraisal and physiological response in emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 339–353.
41.
Sonnby-BorgstromM. (2002). Automatic mimicry reactions as related to differences in emotional empathy. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 45, 433–443.
42.
Sonnby-BorgstromM.JonssonP. (2004). Dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment and mimicry reactions at different levels of information processing. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 45, 103–113.
43.
TassinaryL. G.CacioppoJ. T.GeenT. R. (1989). A psychometric study of surface electrode placements for facial electromyographic recording: I. The brow and cheek muscle regions. Psychophysiology, 26, 1–16.
44.
The CNS Analysis Suite [Computer software]. (1999). (Version 5.51). Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Social Neuroscience Laboratory.
45.
VarcinK. J.BaileyP. E.HenryJ. D. (2010). Empathic deficits in schizophrenia: The potential role of rapid facial mimicry. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 16, 621–629. doi:10.1017/s1355617710000329
46.
VeronaE.PatrickC. J.CurtinJ. J.BradleyM. M.LangP. J. (2004). Psychopathy and physiological response to emotionally evocative sounds. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 113, 99–108. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.113.1.99
47.
VrijsenJ. N.LangeW.-G.BeckerE. S.RinckM. (2010). Socially anxious individuals lack unintentional mimicry. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48, 561–564. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2010.02.004
48.
WinkielmanP.CacioppoJ. T. (2001). Mind at ease puts a smile on the face: Psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation elicits positive affect. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 81, 989–1000.
49.
WinkielmanP.NiedenthalP.WielgoszJ.EelenJ.KavanaghL. C. (2015). Embodiment of cognition and emotion. APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 151–175.
50.
WoodA.RychlowskaM.KorbS.NiedenthalP. (2016). Fashioning the face: Sensorimotor simulation contributes to facial expression recognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 227–240.
