Email a Friend
Printer Friendly

Facial Expressions are Contagious

March 29, 2000

We meet a smile with a smile, and an angry face with a frown.
Facial expressions are very contagious, even on a subconscious level.
But if this reaction is pure mimicry or a true reflection of an evoked feeling, is too early to say. Professor Ulf Dimberg, Uppsala University, presents new facts concerning facial expressions in a research report in the recent edition of the journal Psychological Science.

Consistent with Darwin's proposition that facial expressions of emotion have a biological basis, one has proposed that they are controlled by particular “facial affect programs”. Studies of primates show that the evocation of emotional reactions to i.e. a threat display is controlled by innate releasing mechanisms, and is underpinned by specific neurons that selectively respond to facial stimuli.
If human facial expressions are generated by biologically given affect programs, one would expect these programs to operate automatically by eliciting facial muscle reactions spontaneously and independently of any conscious process. This has been the object for Ulf Dimbergs research at the Department of Psychology at Uppsala University.
In a study conducted on 120 students, Ulf Dimberg and his research team has measured the facial muscle activity in the zogomatic major (involved in smiling) and the corrugator supercilii (moves the eye brows when frowning), while the audience was exposed to pictures of happy and angry faces. By the help of a masking technique in combination with a very brief exposure (39 ms), the students were not consciously aware of the exposure.
The study demonstrated that distinct positive and negative facial emotional response patterns could be spontaneously evoked without the awareness of the positive or negative stimuli. The results suggest that the initial facial reactions are controlled by rapidly operating ”affect programs” that can be triggered independently of a conscious cognitive process.
This support the theory that important aspects of emotional face-to-face communication can occur on a subconscious level.
Weather or not the facial reaction originates in mimicingbehaviour or the expression is a reflection of a real emotion is too early to tell.
— This is exiting, says Professor Ulf Dimberg.
— We don’t know yet if one should put the greatest emphasis on the biological or the psychological side of the facial expressions. One theory is that this unconscious and automatic muscle response to others expressions of emotions can be the first step in a chain reaction, and that it is followed by conscious feeling and actions, as i. e. fleeing from a threat, continues Prof. Dimberg.

RSS Feeds

Facial Expressions are Contagious

Science Research Departments