Pet dogs succeed where human companions fail: The presence of pet dogs reduces pain.

Social support from family and friends, albeit associated with beneficial health effects, does not always help to cope with pain. This may be because humans elicit mixed expectations of social support and evaluative judgment. The present studies aimed to test whether pet dogs are a more beneficial source of support in a painful situation than human companions because they are not evaluative.

Putting a label on someone: impact of schizophrenia stigma on emotional mimicry, liking, and interpersonal closeness.

Affiliation is both an antecedent and a consequence of emotional mimicry (i.e. imitating a counterpart's emotional expression).

Wrinkles are neither beautiful nor nice: The effect of facial wrinkles on person perception and interpersonal closeness.

With age, we develop facial wrinkles, which change the appearance of the face making it less attractive. Winkles and folds also "mimic" facial expressions, such that older neutral faces appear more emotional. Both processes can influence first impressions negatively.

Narcissism predicts noise perception but not signal decoding in emotion.

Grandiose narcissists claim that they have better-than-average emotion recognition abilities, but many objective tests do not support this claim. We sought to clarify the relation between grandiose (both agentic and communal) narcissism and emotion recognition by taking a closer look at the components of emotion recognition. In two studies (N = 147, N = 520), using culturally distinct samples and different stimulus materials, we investigated the relation between grandiose narcissism and signal decoding (accurate view of the intended emotion displayed in an expression) as well as noise perception (inaccurate deciphering of secondary emotions that are not part of the emotional message).

I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me-The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry.

Eye contact is an essential element of human interaction and direct eye gaze has been shown to have effects on a range of attentional and cognitive processes. Specifically, direct eye contact evokes a positive affective reaction. As such, it has been proposed that obstructed eye contact reduces emotional mimicry (i.

The different shades of laughter: when do we laugh and when do we mimic other's laughter?

Laughter is an ambiguous phenomenon in response to both positive and negative events and a social signal that coordinates social interactions. We assessed (i) who laughs and why, and (ii) if the type of laughter and whether the observer approves of it impact on facial mimicry as a proxy for shared laughter. For this, 329 participants watched funny, schadenfreude and disgusting scenes and then saw individuals who purportedly reacted to each scene while participants' facial expressions were recorded and analysed.

Higher heart rate variability predicts better affective interaction quality in non-intimate social interactions.

Adaptive emotional responding is crucial for psychological well-being and the quality of social interactions. Resting heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of autonomic nervous system activity, has been suggested to index individual differences in emotion regulation (ER). As non-intimate social interactions require more regulatory efforts than intimate social interactions, we predicted that the association between HRV and affective interaction quality is moderated by the perceived intimacy of the exchange.

Laughing at funerals and frowning at weddings: Top-down influences of context-driven social judgments on emotional mimicry.

This research aimed to assess top-down effects of social judgments on (facial) emotional mimicry. Based on the mimicry as social regulator model (Hess & Fischer, 2013) and the notion that people can use emotion expressions as cues to an expresser's traits (Hareli & Hess, 2010), we predicted that participants judge expressers who show affectively deviant expressions more negatively, feel less close to them and, thus, show reduced mimicry. Participants saw smiles and sad expressions embedded in either a wedding or funeral scene (or neutral control).

Only reappraisers profit from reappraisal instructions: Effects of instructed and habitual reappraisal on stress responses during interpersonal conflicts.

Conflicts are an undesirable yet common aspect of daily interactions with wide-ranging negative consequences. The present research aimed to examine the buffering effect of experimentally instructed reappraisal on self-reported, physiological and behavioral stress indices during interpersonal conflicts, taking into account habitual emotion regulation strategies. For this, 145 participants experienced a standardized laboratory conflict with the instruction to either reappraise (n = 48), to suppress (n = 50), or with no instruction (n = 47) while cardiovascular and neuroendocrine measures were taken.

Reliability of surface facial electromyography.

Data from two studies were used to estimate the reliability of facial EMG when used to index facial mimicry (Study 1) or affective reactions to pictorial stimuli (Study 2). Results for individual muscle sites varied between muscles and depending on data treatment. For difference scores, acceptable internal consistencies were found only for corrugator supercilii, and test-retest reliabilities were low.

Signal and Noise in the Perception of Facial Emotion Expressions: From Labs to Life.

Human interactions are replete with emotional exchanges, and hence, the ability to decode others' emotional expressions is of great importance. The present research distinguishes between the emotional signal (the intended emotion) and noise (perception of secondary emotions) in social emotion perception and investigates whether these predict the quality of social interactions. In three studies, participants completed laboratory-based assessments of emotion recognition ability and later reported their perceptions of naturally occurring social interactions.