Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 77, Issue 3, March 2008, Pages 343-352
Biological Psychology

The impact of social context on mimicry

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2007.11.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Facial mimicry, the tendency to imitate other's facial expressions, has frequently been described as a reflex-like mechanism that function independent of the relationship between expresser and observer. However, there is also evidence suggesting that it is a social cue regulating social interactions and that consequently mimicry varies as a function of social context and the type of emotion expression shown. Two studies were conducted to the assess impact of social group membership and type of expression on facial mimicry. Results suggest that the level of facial mimicry varies as a function of group membership. Moreover, mimicry levels were influenced by the kind of emotion displayed by the expresser. Although participants mimicked happiness displays regardless of the expresser's group membership, negative emotions were either not mimicked or only when shown by an ingroup member.

Section snippets

Impact of social context on mimicry

Everyone can recall wincing at the sight of someone's expression of pain after being hurt, or smiling when a friend, overwhelmed with joy, tells us something great happened to him. These behaviors, mimicry, are an essential part of interactions in everyday life.

Mimicry is usually defined as the tendency to imitate facially, vocally or posturally people with whom we are interacting (e.g., Hess et al., 1999). There is ample evidence for the occurrence of mimicry in both children (e.g., Chisholm

Study 1

Study 1 was conducted to assess whether social group membership defined through shared fundamental attitudes influences mimicry. For this, we adapted the study by McHugo et al. (1991) described above, who found that mimicry and emotional contagion effects associated with happiness displays were influenced by political attitudes. Yet, one possible problem with this study is that the two politicians differed in their general appeal. Reagan was a much more charismatic person and rather expressive.

Participants

A total of 54 students (19 men, 25 women, and 10 gender unknown) from the University of Quebec at Montreal with a mean age of 25 years participated individually. On average, participants rated their political attitudes as 4.2 out of 6 on the Quebec Nationalism Scale (Guimond and Dubé-Simard, 1983), which strongly reflects Bouchard's political position.

Facial stimuli

Twelve short video sequences of expressions displayed by Jean Charest and Lucien Bouchard (three smiles and three frowns each), lasting 13.2 s on

Manipulation check

There were no differences in personal attitude ratings for the two politicians on the dominance (Bouchard: M = 109.57, S.D. = 80.42; Charest: M = 112.18, S.D. = 82.34) t(53) = .190, p = .850), the affiliation (Bouchard: M = 18.11, S.D. = 109.86; Charest: M = 32.02, S.D. = 75.95), t(53) = .703, p = .485), or the pleasantness (Bouchard: M = 82.19, S.D. = 40.16; Charest: M = 76.31, S.D. = 34.80, t(53) = 1.019, p = .313) subscales confirming that the two politicians were perceived very similarly as far as their personality was

Discussion

The present results suggest that social group membership, as defined by shared political attitude, influences facial mimicry. Specifically, although Bouchard's supporters showed congruent muscle activity to his anger displays, they showed no clear muscle pattern while judging Charest's anger displays. For happiness displays, however, participants showed equivalent mimicry for both Bouchard and Charest's displays. This finding is congruent with the notion that happiness, because it incurs low

Study 2

Study 1 supports the notion that mimicry can be influenced by aspects of the social context, in this case, cues relevant to the shared group status of observer and target. Also, the findings suggest that mimicking different emotions might entrain different costs, leading to variation in the level of mimicry shown. However, in Study 1, the ingroup and outgroup member were two different people, thus it is possible that some of the effects were particular to the individuals in question, as

Participants

Sixty French Canadian men (with a mean age of 23.5 years) participated individually. Half the participants were active basketball players recruited from sports centers at the University of Quebec at Montreal and nearby Colleges, the other half of the participants, also recruited from the University of Quebec at Montreal and nearby Colleges, did neither play basketball themselves nor were basketball fans.

Facial stimuli

The facial stimuli consisted of expressions of happiness, sadness and anger by four

Judgment data

Following the presentation of each stimulus, subjects were asked to assess the emotions portrayed as well as their intensities using an emotion profile. These data will not be discussed in the context of this article.

Facial EMG

The same procedure as in Study 1 was employed with the exception that activity of the Levator Labii Aleaque Nasii, the muscle that lifts the lip in a scowl, was also recorded.2

Manipulation check

Participants were chosen based on whether they were member of a basketball team or not. However, to make sure that non-basketball players were not hardcore basketball fans, and thus would highly identify themselves with basketball players, we assessed participants’ level of identification with basketball, using a modified version of the inclusion-in-the-self scale (Aron et al., 1992). The validity of this scale for ingroup identification has been established by Tropp and Wright (2001). Results

Discussion

In sum, the results underline the impact of the relationship between expresser and observer for facial emotional mimicry. Further, we found that men did not mimic unknown angry men but did mimic other emotions displayed by men. This finding replicates findings by Bourgeois and Hess (2007) who found this effect for both sexes. Yet the finding contrasts with previous studies that found mimicry of anger expressions (e.g., Dimberg, 1982, Dimberg, 1988). However, those results were obtained in

Conclusions

In sum, the results from both studies suggest that emotional facial mimicry is affected by the relationship between the expresser and the observer as well as by the type of emotion expression that is shown. In both studies, negative emotion expressions were mimicked only when shown by an ingroup member; in contrast, happiness was always mimicked.

As mentioned above, the function of mimicry is to increase rapport between interaction partners (Chartrand and Bargh, 1999, see also Hess et al., 1999

Acknowledgements

This study is a part of the first author's doctoral dissertation conducted under the supervision of the second author. The authors wish to thank Nathalie Beaulieu for her contribution to the second study.

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