Task-irrelevant emotional expressions are not mimicked, but may modulate the mimicry of task-relevant emotional expressions.

Emotional mimicry-the imitation of others' emotions-is an empathic response that helps to navigate social interactions. Mimicry is absent when participants' task does not involve engaging with the expressers' emotions. This may be because task-irrelevant faces (i.

Lagged multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis for determining leader-follower relationships within multidimensional time series.

The current article introduces lagged multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis. The method is an extension of multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis and allows to quantify the joint dynamics of multivariate time series and to investigate leader-follower relationships in behavioral and physiological data. Moreover, the method enables the quantification of the joint dynamics of a group, when such leader-follower relationships are taken into account.

Distinct neural correlates of accuracy and bias in the perception of facial emotion expressions.

We investigated neural correlates of Emotion Recognition Accuracy (ERA) using the Assessment of Contextualized Emotions (ACE). ACE infuses context by presenting emotion expressions in a naturalistic group setting and distinguishes between accurately perceiving intended emotions (signal), and bias due to perceiving additional, secondary emotions (noise). This social perception process is argued to induce perspective taking in addition to pattern matching in ERA.

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.

Emotional scenes as context in emotional expression recognition: The role of emotion or valence match.

Emotion recognition is influenced by contextual information such as social category cues or background scenes. However, past studies yielded mixed findings regarding whether broad valence or specific emotion matches drive context effects and how multiple sources of contextual information may influence emotion recognition. To address these questions, participants were asked to categorize expressions on male and female faces posing happiness and anger and happiness and fear on pleasant and fearful backgrounds (Experiment 1, conducted in 2019), fearful and disgusted expressions on fear and disgust eliciting backgrounds (Experiment 2, conducted in 2022), and fearful and sad expressions on fear and sadness eliciting backgrounds (Experiment 3, conducted in 2022).

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.

What is it about your face that tells me what you want from me? Emotional appeals are associated with specific mental images.

Emotional facial expressions have a communicative function. Besides information about the internal states (emotions) and the intentions of the expresser (action tendencies), they also communicate what the expresser wants the observer to do (appeals). Yet, there is very little research on the association of appeals with specific emotions.

Influence of child and adult faces with face masks on emotion perception and facial mimicry.

Emotional mimicry, the imitation of others' emotion expressions, is related to increased interpersonal closeness and better interaction quality. Yet, little research has focused on the effect of face masks on emotional mimicry and none on (masked) child faces. To address this gap, we conducted an online experiment (N = 235, German sample, adult perceivers).

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).

Politics speak louder than skills: Political similarity effects in hireability judgments in multiparty contexts and the role of political interest.

Recruiters increasingly cybervet job applicants by checking their social media profiles. Theory (i.e.

Reconceptualizing Emotion Recognition Ability.

Emotion decoding accuracy (EDA) plays a central role within the emotional intelligence (EI) ability model. The EI-ability perspective typically assumes personality antecedents and social outcomes of EI abilities, yet, traditionally, there has been very limited research to support this contention. The present paper argues that the way in which EDA has been conceptualized and operationalized in EI research has ignored developments in social perception theory and research.

Emotion recognition accuracy only weakly predicts empathic accuracy in a standard paradigm and in real life interactions.

The relationship between decoding ability (Emotion recognition accuracy, ERA) for negative and positive emotion expressions from only video, only audio and audio-video stimuli and the skill to understand peoples' unspoken thoughts and feelings (Empathic accuracy, EA) was tested. Participants ( = 101) from three groups (helping professionals with and without therapy training as well as non-helping professionals) saw or heard recordings of narrations of a negative event by four different persons. Based on either audio-video or audio-only recordings, the participants indicated for given time points what they thought the narrator was feeling and thinking while speaking about the event.

Language and face in interactions: emotion perception, social meanings, and communicative intentions.

Introduction: Human emotions can be complex to interpret as they have multiple sources and are often times ambiguous, for example, when the signals sent by different channels of communication are inconsistent. Our study investigates the interaction of linguistic and facial expressions of emotions.

Methods: In two experiments, participants read short scenarios in German containing a direct utterance with positive or negative emotive markers, in combination with different facial expressions as still images of the speaker (i.

Effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies measured by self-report and EMG as a result of strategy used, negative emotion strength and participants' baseline HRV.

We investigated how emotion regulation (ER) effectiveness-on both a self-reported rating as well as emotional expression (corrugator supercilii muscle activity) level-is affected by the characteristics of the situation (low vs. high negativity), the strategy used (reinterpretation, distraction, suppression, no regulation control condition) and individual dispositions (low vs. high baseline Heart Rate Variability) as well as their interaction.

Liver Assessment in Patients with Ataxia-Telangiectasia: Transient Elastography Detects Early Stages of Steatosis and Fibrosis.

Background: Ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) is a rare autosomal-recessive multisystem disorder characterized by pronounced cerebellar ataxia, telangiectasia, cancer predisposition, and altered body composition. Liver diseases with steatosis, fibrosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma are frequent findings in older patients but sensitive noninvasive diagnostic tools are lacking.

Objectives: To determine the sensitivity of transient elastography (TE) as a screening tool for early hepatic tissue changes and serum biomarkers for liver disease.

A motivational approach to perfectionism and striving for excellence: Development of a new continuum-based scale for post-secondary students.

Perfectionism has been the object of many disputes. One such debate pertains to the nature of perfectionistic strivings. Whereas perfectionistic concerns (PC) have been shown to correlate with negative outcomes, perfectionistic strivings (PS) have been associated with mixed outcomes.

Mimicry of partially occluded emotional faces: do we mimic what we see or what we know?

Facial electromyography (EMG) was used to investigate patterns of facial mimicry in response to partial facial expressions in two contexts that differ in how naturalistic and socially significant the faces are. Experiment 1 presented participants with either the upper- or lower-half of facial expressions and used a forced-choice emotion categorisation task. This task emphasises cognition at the expense of ecological and social validity.

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.

Emotional mimicry as social regulator: theoretical considerations.

The goal of this article is to discuss theoretical arguments concerning the idea that emotional mimicry is an intrinsic part of our social being and thus can be considered a social act. For this, we will first present the theoretical assumptions underlying the Emotional Mimicry as Social Regulator view. We then provide a brief overview of recent developments in emotional mimicry research and specifically discuss new developments regarding the role of emotional mimicry in actual interactions and relationships, and individual differences in emotional mimicry.

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.

Infusing Context Into Emotion Perception Impacts Emotion Decoding Accuracy.

The accurate decoding of facial emotion expressions lies at the center of many research traditions in psychology. Much of this research, while paying lip service to the importance of context in emotion perception, has used stimuli that were carefully created to be deprived of contextual information. The participants' task is to associate the expression shown in the face with a label, essentially changing a social perception task into a cognitive task.

Facing social exclusion: a facial EMG examination of the reaffiliative function of smiling.

Social exclusion influences how expressions are perceived and the tendency of the perceiver to mimic them. However, less is known about social exclusion's effect on one's own facial expressions. The aim of the present study was to identify the effects of social exclusion on Duchenne smiling behaviour, defined as activity of both and the muscles.