Mariëlle Stel

The Role of Facial Mimicry in the Recognition of Affect

How do you decide whether the emotion expressed on another person’s face is positive or negative? Emotions may be perceived via two routes. The longer (slower) route involves matching visual input with stored knowledge about emotions. The shorter (faster) route involves empathic emotions that serve as proprioceptive cues in emotion recognition. In line with embodiedcognition theory (Barsalou, Niedenthal, Barbey, & Ruppert, 2003), we propose that mimicry may result in faster emotion recognition because it facilitates use of the shorter route. To test this idea, we studied the effect of constraining mimicry on speed of emotion recognition. Consistent with the present view, perceivers spontaneously mimic facial expressions of emotions (Dimberg, 1990), and their own experienced emotions are affected accordingly (Stel, Van Baaren, & Vonk, in press). Freezing the face reduces the experience of emotional empathy (Stel et al., in press). Blairy, Herrera, and Hess (1999) failed to demonstrate a link between mimicry and accuracy of emotion recognition. However, we propose that mimicry facilitates the short route of one’s access to others’ emotions, which means that mimicry should affect speed, but not accuracy, of emotion recognition. We hypothesized that participants will recognize a briefly exposed facial expression of emotion more slowly when they are unable to mimic facial expressions than when they are free to mimic the expression. Moreover, we expect this effect to be more pronounced for women than for men: Women are more facially expressive than are men (LaFrance & Hecht, 2000), and facial feedback may be more important in emotion-related processing for women than it is for men. METHOD

Facial Feedback Mechanisms in Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Facial feedback mechanisms of adolescents with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were investigated utilizing three studies. Facial expressions, which became activated via automatic (Studies 1 and 2) or intentional (Study 2) mimicry, or via holding a pen between the teeth (Study 3), influenced corresponding emotions for controls, while individuals with ASD remained emotionally unaffected. Thus, individuals with ASD do not experience feedback from activated facial expressions as controls do. This facial feedback-impairment enhances our understanding of the social and emotional lives of individuals with ASD.

Effects of a Priori Liking on the Elicitation of Mimicry

Mimicry and prosocial feelings are generally thought to be positively related. However, the conditions under which mimicry and liking are related largely remain unspecified. We advance this specification by examining the relationship between mimicry and liking more thoroughly. In two experiments, we manipulated an individuals a priori liking for another and investigated whether it influenced mimicry of that person. Our experiments demonstrate that in the presence of a reason to like a target, automatic mimicry is increased. However, mimicry did not decrease when disliking a target. These studies provide further evidence of a link between mimicry and liking and extend previous research by showing that a certain level of mimicry even occurs when mimicry behavior is inconsistent with ones goals or motivations.

Lowering the Pitch of Your Voice Makes You Feel More Powerful and Think More Abstractly

Voice pitch may not only influence the listeners but also the speakers themselves. Based on the theories of embodied cognition and previous research on power, we tested whether lowering their pitch leads people to feel more powerful and think more abstractly. In three experiments, participants received instructions to read a text out loud with either a lower or a higher voice than usual. Subsequently, feelings of power (Experiments 1 and 2) and abstract thinking (Experiment 3) were assessed. Participants who lowered their voice pitch perceived themselves more as possessing more powerful traits (Experiments 1 and 2) and had a higher level of abstract thinking (Experiment 3) compared to participants who raised their voice pitch.

The impact of mimicking on attitudes toward products presented in TV commercials

Commercials influence our attitudes and consumer behavior. We investigated whether mimicking product presenters in commercials adds to positive effects on attitudes and behavioral consumer intentions. Participants watched TV commercials and were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of the model presenting a product. Then we measured their attitude toward the products (Studies 1 and 2) and their behavioral intention to buy the products (Study 2). Results revealed that mimickers had a more positive attitude toward the presented products and had more intention to buy the products than non-mimickers. Furthermore we demonstrated that the mimicry effect on behavioral intention was mediated by attitudes. Thus mimicry makes products presented in a persuasive setting more attractive to us, which increases the intention to buy these products.

The provenance of émigrés: the validity of measuring knowledge of places

ABSTRACT Establishing the origin of those seeking asylum is essential but difficult as asylum seekers often cannot corroborate their origin claim with documents. The aim of the present study was to assess whether asking knowledge questions, sketch questions and impossible questions are valid methods to determine the veracity of an origin claim. Participants (N = 105) from Tilburg (truth-tellers), Maastricht (partial liars) and Gothenburg (full liars) were asked to convince an interviewer that they originated from Tilburg. Half of them prepared and half of them did not prepare themselves for the interview. They were asked 10 knowledge questions typically asked to assess the credibility of origin claims, 4 impossible questions and 1 sketch question. Participants from Tilburg answered more questions correctly than participants from Maastricht and Gothenburg. Performance also improved with preparation. Even though the results did provide some support for the validity of assessing claims about origin by asking knowledge questions, the differences between the groups were modest, and it was impossible to correctly identify all truth-tellers and liars. Changing the output modality from verbal answering to sketching contributed to the credibility assessment of origin claims, whereas impossible questions were not discriminatory.

When do we see that others misrepresent how they feel? : Detecting deception from emotional faces with direct and indirect measures

Abstract Nonverbally-expressed emotions are not always linked to people’s true emotions. We investigated whether observers’ ability to distinguish trues from lies differs for positive and negative emotional expressions. Participants judged targets either simulating or truly experiencing positive or negative emotions. Deception detection was measured by participants’ inference of the targets’ emotions and their direct judgments of deception. Results of the direct measure showed that participants could not accurately distinguish between truth tellers and liars, regardless which emotion was expressed. As anticipated, the effects emerged on the indirect emotion measure: participants distinguished liars from truth tellers when inferring experienced emotions from negative emotional expressions, but not positive emotional expressions.