TY  - JOUR
A1  - Trilla, Irene
A1  - Drimalla, Hanna
A1  - Bajbouj, Malek
A1  - Dziobek, Isabel
T1  - The influence of reward on facial mimicry
BT  - no evidence for a significant effect of oxytocin
JF  - Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience
N2  - Recent findings suggest a role of oxytocin on the tendency to spontaneously mimic the emotional facial expressions of others. Oxytocin-related increases of facial mimicry, however, seem to be dependent on contextual factors. Given previous literature showing that people preferentially mimic emotional expressions of individuals associated with high (vs. low) rewards, we examined whether the reward value of the mimicked agent is one factor influencing the oxytocin effects on facial mimicry. To test this hypothesis, 60 male adults received 24 IU of either intranasal oxytocin or placebo in a double-blind, between-subject experiment. Next, the value of male neutral faces was manipulated using an associative learning task with monetary rewards. After the reward associations were learned, participants watched videos of the same faces displaying happy and angry expressions. Facial reactions to the emotional expressions were measured with electromyography. We found that participants judged as more pleasant the face identities associated with high reward values than with low reward values. However, happy expressions by low rewarding faces were more spontaneously mimicked than high rewarding faces. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find a significant direct effect of intranasal oxytocin on facial mimicry, nor on the reward-driven modulation of mimicry. Our results support the notion that mimicry is a complex process that depends on contextual factors, but failed to provide conclusive evidence of a role of oxytocin on the modulation of facial mimicry.
KW  - oxytocin
KW  - facial mimicry
KW  - reward
KW  - EMG
KW  - social modulation
KW  - null results
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00088
SN  - 1662-5153
VL  - 14
PB  - Frontiers Media
CY  - Lausanne
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Drimalla, Hanna
A1  - Landwehr, Niels
A1  - Hess, Ursula
A1  - Dziobek, Isabel
T1  - From face to face
BT  - the contribution of facial mimicry to cognitive and emotional empathy
JF  - Cognition and Emotion
N2  - Despite advances in the conceptualisation of facial mimicry, its role in the processing of social information is a matter of debate. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between mimicry and cognitive and emotional empathy. To assess mimicry, facial electromyography was recorded for 70 participants while they completed the Multifaceted Empathy Test, which presents complex context-embedded emotional expressions. As predicted, inter-individual differences in emotional and cognitive empathy were associated with the level of facial mimicry. For positive emotions, the intensity of the mimicry response scaled with the level of state emotional empathy. Mimicry was stronger for the emotional empathy task compared to the cognitive empathy task. The specific empathy condition could be successfully detected from facial muscle activity at the level of single individuals using machine learning techniques. These results support the view that mimicry occurs depending on the social context as a tool to affiliate and it is involved in cognitive as well as emotional empathy.
KW  - Facial mimicry
KW  - empathy
KW  - emotional
KW  - cognitive
KW  - complex emotions
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1596068
SN  - 0269-9931
SN  - 1464-0600
VL  - 33
IS  - 8
SP  - 1672
EP  - 1686
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  -